Why You Need to Vote
October 12, 2020
My Dear Readers,
Hi! I know it's been a while since we talked. I also know that you may be sick unto death of hearing about politics. I know I am. In fact, I have channeled my frustration into this special 2020-themed version of Female Cause of Death BINGO.
But.
I need you to vote.
Wait, isn't this a pop culture blog?
Of course it is. And, I promise you, once this election season is over, we will snap straight back to our regularly scheduled analysis of fictional female demise. I also promise that I do have some pop culture for you.
First, however, I need you to vote.
Why do you care?
I've always taken voting very seriously. Through the years, I have done more down-ballot research into assorted judicial and school board candidates than I've done into the last time James Bond smoked on-screen.* I always open the door for canvassers and answer the phone to pollsters, even when they turn out to be calling from a state I left 6 years ago.** Heck, I'm currently canvassing by text, while working 4 jobs remotely and trying to survive a pandemic. I believe in voting.
Part of this comes from the way I was raised. My mom and her best friend worked the polls in every election for over 2 decades, while Dad served as a county committeeperson and poll observer. I stuffed envelopes for my first campaign mailer before I could read; I could confidently explain how to use a voting machine before I entered school; and I was the only kindergartener in my class who knew the word "electioneering."
*(It was 2002, not that you asked.)
**This has happened twice.
Why don't you go vote, then?
I do! I vote every time, come hell or high water. And truly, my friends, there has been some high water.
At 19, I had to request my first absentee ballot, and the county clerk shared my address with her party's candidates. My college mailbox was deluged with flyers for weeks. I read them all, and I voted.
At 21, I volunteered to drive fellow college students to the polls. One of my passengers was on crutches, and the polling station was inexplicably located in the ramp-less basement of a public school. We had to hop him down the stairs like he was on a pogo stick. He and I both voted.
At 27, I wrangled a day off from one of my jobs but not the other two, so I had to get up, walk half a mile to my polling station, vote, then take a bus into NYC and work the first job, take the bus back out and work the other job. I voted.
And this very week, ladies and gentlemen, I received a special-edition, pandemic-necessitated mail-in ballot with instructions so convoluted that I seriously had to read them 4 times before I was sure I'd done them right. But I still voted: filling out the 3-sided ballot (yes, 3-sided) at my kitchen table; sealing it in one envelope; signing my name and address on that envelope's flap; putting that envelope inside a second envelope on which I also had to write my name and address; sealing it; and finally delivering the whole kit & kaboodle to a drop box one town over - to which I rode on the back of my husband's motorcycle.
Why are you telling me every shenanigan that's ever happened to you at the polls?
Because I'm about to tell you which shenanigans haven't happened to me.
I promised you pop culture, and here it is: a clip from that oracle of the modern world, BBC's Call the Midwife. In this episode, an aging suffragette starts hoarding food in her senility, and faces being forced into a nursing home as a result. When a District Nurse gains her trust, she finally reveals what she went through during a hunger strike in prison.
Suffragist Remembers - from Call the Midwife from Claire Fisher on Vimeo.
I've never had to starve myself for my right to vote. (In fact, I bake the Scones of Democracy™ for my poll workers every year - the one campaign promise that's never failed!)
I haven't been turned away for lack of photo ID.
I haven't been mysteriously purged from voter rolls despite being eligible.
I haven't been beaten up or threatened by neo-Nazis who were dog-whistled by our president into doing so.
I haven't been scared off by a Republican "ballot security task force" that inspired a 36-year-long consent decree concerning the behavior of poll-watchers (which expired 18 months ago.)
I haven't had my ballot dropboxes taken away, my registration site taken down before the deadline, or been subject to federal lawsuits designed to force me to risk my health during a pandemic.
Cool, but how's that relevant?
While there are some years I take all of these privileges for granted, this isn't one of them.
I need you to vote - for yourself, for me, for our fellow Americans, and for our ancestors' memory.
You need to vote this year because all of the shenanigans I listed are real things that are really happening to voters. You need to vote this year because we need to stop those shenanigans the same way people stopped the historical shenanigans of poll taxes, literacy tests, and suffrage restrictions on the basis of sex and race: by refusing to stand for them anymore.
You need to vote because the people who refused to stand for those shenanigans, did so on your behalf - and put their bodies on the line to do so. For example, women suffragists were arrested on false charges, force-fed during hunger strikes, and beaten up in a "Night of Terror" - beaten so severely, I might add, that it shocked the conscience of noted Not-A-Nice-Guy Woodrow Wilson. Let's not waste their sacrifice.
*sniff* I was expecting more cheerful pop culture.
Here, before you vote, watch Mrs. Banks (Glynis Johns) singing "Sister Suffragette," which was supposed to mock her but instead makes her seem pretty badass:
Now, please vote.
Why should I listen to you?
This is a fair question. After all, I run a pop culture blog. Yet I am also a teacher, a historian, and a volunteer who's spent years helping legal immigrants become US citizens. Most importantly, however, I'm a citizen myself. I know that this country deserves a future determined by all of us working together on the issues we care about. To do that, we all need to vote.
Yes, all of us.
That means you.