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Reasons to Vote

By Melissa Markham on November 6, 2007 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I take voting very seriously. I have never missed a major election and haven't missed many of the 'minor' ones. I have tried to instill the importance of voting in my children. So much so, in fact, that I spent an hour during the last presidential election getting my oldest stepson to vote(his car was broken) even though he was going to vote for 'the other guy.'

A dear friend of mine and I sit on the opposite sides of the political fence. We don't talk about politics too much because we don't want it to harm our friendship. But there are some things we agree on and that is that every single vote counts.

The other day she passed me a couple of articles that I want to share with you. There is still plenty of time for you to get out and vote today! If you aren't registered, make it a top priority this coming year. We are so blessed to live in a country where we can vote for candidates. It is appalling how many people throw that priviledge and right away. Other citizens around the world are dying to have what we take for granted.

So You’re Not Going to Vote

(Adapted from the League of Women Voters Education Fund, Voting
Rights Project)

So you’re not going to vote, huh? You say your ONE VOTE is not going
to make any difference among all those thousands.

Well, we have news for you: It just might make a difference. Down
through history, some pretty important things have been decided by
just ONE VOTE. For example:

By ONE VOTE: Adolph Hitler won leadership of the German Nazi Party in
1923.

By ONE VOTE: Congress saved the U.S. Army from instant collapse by
voting on August 12, 1941, to extend the Selective Service Act of
1940 (about to lapse) for another 18 months, less than 4 months
before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

By ONE VOTE: A Texas convention voted for Lyndon B. Johnson over ex-
Governor Coke Steven in a contested senatorial election in 1948.

By ONE VOTE: Thomas Jefferson won the American presidency over Aaron
Burr when the election was thrown into the House of Representatives.

BY ONE VOTE: Women won the right to vote in 1920 when Tennessee
became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment because one
Tennessee legislator, 24-year-old Harry Burn, changed his vote at the
insistence of his elderly mother.

By ONE VOTE: Myrlie Evers-Williams was elected chair of the NAACP
Board of Directors.

By ONE VOTE: John Quincy Adams became President in a dead-lock
between Adams and Andrew Jackson in 1824.

By ONE VOTE: Rutherford B. Hayes became President over Samuel Tilden
in 1876.

By ONE VOTE: Charles I of England was executed in 1649.

By ONE VOTE: President Andrew Johnson was saved from impeachment.

By ONE VOTE: The English language was chosen over German for America
in 1775.

By ONE VOTE: Washington, Oregon, and Idaho became a part of the
United States.

By ONE VOTE: France was changed from a monarchy to a republic in
1875.

If one more person in ten Cook County (Illinois) precincts had voted
for Richard M. Nixon in 1960, John F. Kennedy would not have been
elected president.

So your vote does count. Don’t waste it by staying home.

And a brief excerpt on a woman's right to vote in the U.S.:

July 1917, suffragettes picket the White House demanding the right to vote
(they'd only been asking for approx 70 years). The police stood by as
the crowd punched several women in their faces, knocked them down and
dragged them along the sidewalks, and shot at them. Virginian to the
core, Pres. Woodrow Wilson, gets tired of the pickets after a time,
and orders the police to "stop the lawless picketers". Two civilians
stepped in to stop a policemen form beating a suffragette - the
civilians are arrested, and the police resume the beatings. This is
what happened to Alice Paul, one of the women arrested in front of
the White House, asking for her right to vote. This is why I insist
that my daughter votes:

"Alice Paul was tried and sentenced to 7 months in prison and placed
in solitary confinement at Occoquan Workhouse, a prison in Virginia.
For two weeks, she had nothing to eat except bread and water. Alice,
along with the other suffragists, including frail, older women, were
beaten, pushed and thrown into cold, unsanitary, and rat-infested
cells. Under orders from W. H. Whittaker, superintendent of the
Occoquan Workhouse, as many as forty guards with clubs went on a
rampage, brutalizing thirty-three jailed suffragists. They beat Lucy
Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head, and left
her there for the night. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell,
smashed her head against an iron bed, and knocked her out cold. Her
cellmate Alice Cosu, who believed Mrs. Lewis to be dead, suffered a
heart attack. According to affidavits, other women were grabbed,
dragged, beaten, choked, slammed, pinched, twisted, and kicked.

Weak and unable to walk, Alice Paul was taken to the prison hospital.
There she began a hunger strike--one which others would join. "It
was," Paul said later, "the strongest weapon left with which to
continue... our battle . . ."

"In response to the hunger strike, prison doctors put Alice Paul in a
psychiatric ward. They threatened to transfer her to an insane
asylum. Still, she refused to eat. Afraid that she might die, doctors
force fed her. Three times a day for three weeks, they forced a tube
down her throat and poured liquids into her stomach. Despite the pain
and illness the force feeding caused, Paul refused to end the hunger
strike--or her fight for the vote.