My Vote Goes To...

         First of all, I have to get something off my chest. I am someone that you hate. I am a Florida voter.
         Not only that, I am a Florida voter who voted for Ralph Nader. That's okay, get it out of your system. I'll go on when you're ready.
         Okay, now that's over with, and I have to say that I am completely undecided in this election. Ralph Nader has been kicked off the ticket, and besides, he's gotten a little too crazy even for those of us who were crazy enough to vote for him in the first place. The last election has made me vitally aware of how much our votes actually do count, and I am taking my vote very seriously. Who does my vote go to?
         My vote defines who I am, and what I believe in. It is something that I take very seriously. I voted for Nader because I wasn't comfortable with either of the other candidates, and wanted to say so loud and clear. I was heard. Not in the way I wanted to be, though. My vote for Nader was in the form of a protest against the same old, same old candidates. I want to be proud of my vote. I want to be able, when my candidate does something that I am proud of, to say, Yes, I voted for him. Or, if he does something that I am ashamed of, I say, Yes, I voted for him. That is what my vote is to me. It is personal accountability, and responsibilty. It is my stake in this country, this government.
         So, here I am, undecided again. Only there is a lot more at stake than four years ago. We are a country at war, a country that is losing jobs, a country that cannot seem to take care of its seniors or its children. There are so many problems, serious problems, that this country is facing right now, and who we elect as our next president will have a profound effect on how those problems are handled. How do I decide? Do I go with my economic views, which are conservative, or my social veiws, which are more liberal? Do I think about someone who has been my friend since I was five years old, and was lucky enough to return to his wife and children from Iraq basically intact? Or do I think about my grandmother, who cannot work and is scraping by on her social security, as long as she doesn't get sick and her landlord doesn't raise her rent? Do I think of my children, who are lucky enough to live in an area that has good schools - but could easily be going to schools that are overcrowded and underfunded? Or do I just say "Enough!" and vote for whoever seems to be a "good guy"? I used to get upset that I didn't get information on candidates sent to me. I honestly wanted to learn about the candidates and issues and amendments on the ballot. Now I am being inundated, but it's doing no good, because I am intelligent enough to know propaganda when I read it. I am learning to recognize spin and exaggeration as well, and I wish they would stop sending me pamphlets. I want honesty and accurate information, and neither party is providing that right now. They are trying to scare me into voting for them. "The Republicans will drive the country into debt." "The Democrats will let us be attacked by terrorists." "The Republicans will reinstate the draft." This is the kind of thing I find in my mailbox. I ignore it, it is not helping me, in fact it has made me disgusted with all the candidates. But I still need to vote, therefore I still need to decide.
         What do I make my top priority?
         All of the issues I mentioned are important to me, as are many others that the candidates are polarized on. And this is just the presidential race- I'm not even going into the race for Congress, Senate, and all of the various amendments that I need to make up my mind about. Whichever way I end up voting, it is ultimately my decision. But everyone is trying to influence my vote. Why? Because I am a woman, and they all want my vote. They need it. If you are black, or Hispanic, they need your vote too. Why is that? There's a very simple reason. Because we actually vote. I have a hypothesis about why that is. First of all, women, blacks and Hispanics are still referred to as "minorities" in this country - the reason we vote is because, for so long, we have been treated as minorities in this country. Women and African-Americans were granted the right to vote less than a hundred years ago. My grandmother was the first woman in our family to vote. And not only was our enstatement as voters recent, but we had to fight tooth and nail for that right. People were harassed and ostracized and even killed in the fights for voting rights, both for women and for African-Americans. Most Hispanics (and I am speaking from the perspective of my home state) came to America from countries that didn't hold elections at all, or held elections that were known widely to be merely a farce of Democratic participation. When was the last time the average white Caucasian male had to fight for the right to take part in their own government? Excluding the Civil War,which is arguable, the last time was 1776.
         Although the memories we hold as a country of the Revolutionary War are rather dim, the memory of a fight of that nature, if not on the same scale, doesn't fade in only two generations. We - the "minorities" - still consider voting a privilege, and a solemn duty. We educate ourselves about the issues, and we feel strongly about them. There are not a lot of "yellow-dog" Democrats - or Republicans - among us. We need to be convinced that the candidate for our party is the right one for the job, at least, compared to the other candidate. Or we refuse to join a party, and wait for either side to prove themselves. (And please, don't get me started on the unfairness of the two-party system that has evolved in America... grrr...)
         Anyway, my point is this... even though voting is vitally important to our lives, most of the people who vote are women, Hispanics, and African Americans - and the total amount of people that vote in this country is less than fifty percent. Please imagine that I have written that in letters sixty feet tall, because that is an amazing statistic. That means that, using the '00 election as an example, less than one quarter of the people in America determined for the other three quarters who the next leader of our country would be. I remember staying awake for most of that night, watching the whole debacle on television, and hearing one of the reporters comment on what an amazingly high turnout one county had recorded - 46% of the eligible voters had voted. And that was "amazingly high"? Less than half?
         I want everyone who reads this to just think about that for a moment. Unfortunately, if you are not registered to vote already, you will not be eligible to vote in the upcoming election. But register anyway. Because there are going to be midpoint elections in two years, and then national elections again two years after that. If you want to be heard, you have to speak out - or others will speak for you. The more people that vote, the more our government will truly be "of the people". And maybe, if elected officials realize that people are paying attention to them and their actions - and doing something about it - they will remember that, ultimately, they are supposed to listen to us. We. The people.