Too Busy for Democracy?

“Voting is your civic duty.” Most students have heard some version of this pithy cliché before, but few stop to consider the tremendous history behind it. It seems that with each passing election cycle, voters, especially the youth, increasingly see voting as an annoyance or banal triviality that can be shrugged off. The trend is shockingly disturbing on a number of levels, but most importantly: A democracy simply cannot function properly without active citizenship.

The fact is the story of American society and the history of voting rights in this country are inseparable. School children are taught about the Boston Tea Party and the Stamp Act Revolt, rebellions against British taxation without American colonial representation in Parliament. And when a motley band of patriots first opened fire on the British Empire in 1776, they were shots fired in the name of the right to vote.

Still, for much of this country’s early history, one had to be white, male, and land-owning to have any claim on the ballot box. It would take more than a century, with mass marches, hunger strikes, and protests for American women to receive similar rights. And while the Civil War, and the over 600,000 Americans killed, resulted in Constitutional guarantees of voting rights to non-whites too, they did not become a reality until the late 1960s. Much of the early Civil Rights movement was devoted to registering African Americans to vote. The infamous “Bloody Sunday” march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge was in the name of the right to vote—Congressman John Lewis of Georgia still bears the marks of being brutally beaten by Alabama state troopers that day.

Imagine: Less than 50 years ago, for an African American to attempt to vote in the American South was an offense punishable by vigilante murder, and today Americans of all races may choose to let Election Day slip by unnoticed and unattended to.

A turn to recent statistics portrays an even more dramatic and upsetting apathy toward voting. In the 2008 presidential election, by all accounts a once-in-a-lifetime election in terms of energy and voter excitement, less than half of Americans 18 to 24 years old chose to cast a ballot. The apathy is frankly an embarrassment, as people from Zimbabwe to Venezuela to Russia dream of the right to cast their votes free and without intimidation.

If anything, the tired excuse of “my vote doesn’t count” has becoming more and more irrelevant in the face of a string of incredibly close, high-profile elections. In 2000, George W. Bush won the state of Florida and the presidency with 537 votes. The 2004 Washington gubernatorial race was decided by 133 votes. And the 2008 Minnesota Senate race was won a margin by 312 votes.

Of the majority of young American citizens who did not vote in 2008, the top two excuses they gave were that they were “too busy,” or they were “not interested.” Thank goodness that American men and women, from Susan B. Anthony to Martin Luther King Jr., were not too busy or disinterested to march, bleed, and, in some cases die, for the right to vote for every American citizen. When we choose not to vote, we do a grave dishonor to their legacy.

The message is simple. Honor our history, support our democracy, and make your voice heard. So please, go out and vote, in person or absentee. It is, after all, your civic duty.

Jacob J. Cedarbaum ’12, a Crimson editorial writer, is a History and History of Art and Architecture concentrator in Currier House. He is the Chair of the IOP’s National Campaign for Political and Civic Engagement, which coordinates student voter registration.