Washington is a vote by mail state. The ballots arrived last week. While Julian was making dinner Wednesday night, I filled out my ballot and put it in the mailbox. He completed his ballot and sent it the next day. The beauty of voting by mail is that you can fill out your ballot in the comfort of your home, with the voters’ guides as reference. You don’t need to worry about being late for work because of the line at the polling place. It also negates many of the pesky voter-suppression strategies that seem to be in use in other states.
Voting is a right AND a responsibility. People lost their lives to gain universal voting rights. There is a stained-glass window in Sage Chapel on the Cornell University campus that honors Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner. These three men were murdered in Mississippi in 1964 for registering black people to vote. Many others, known and unknown, were arrested or beaten attempting to vote. Susan B. Anthony was arrested in 1872 for the crime of voting. Anthony and most of her contemporaries in the women’s suffrage movement didn’t live to see the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution passed, which gave women the right to vote.
You may be thinking that your vote doesn’t matter. Let me give you two examples to counter that claim. The 2004 gubernatorial election in Washington was decided by less than 150 votes. This was before Washington adopted vote by mail. If 150 people had not gone to the polls that day, the results would have been reversed. Last year an election for the Virginia House of Delegates wound up in a tie. The eventual winner was drawn by lot.
My purpose in writing this post is not to convince you to vote one way or another. Rather, I just want you to vote. In my opinion, if you abdicate your right to vote, you abdicate your right to complain if the election doesn’t turn out in your favor. Fill out the ballot and mail it in, if you live in Washington. Washington state is paying the postage for you. If you have to go to a polling place, make the time to go. Just vote.
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