It is right and a "right" to vote
I landed in the first batch of voters turned loose on the ballot box following the lowering of the voting age to 18.
Amendment 26, ratified in 1971, got me my first vote at age 20.
I recall spirited debates in high school classes in the 1970s about the proposed change from age 21 to 18. I recall a lot of classmates talking excitedly about getting the right to vote. They believed and I believed that a single vote could make a difference in a national election, even though mathematicians tell us otherwise.
But my interest in the election process started long before those days in high school.
My mother served as a Democratic precinct committeewoman in Cook County, Ill. As long as I can remember, she offered her view of the world and its politics. She made the McKerral children pay attention to issues. We read and watched the news. We kept an election-night vigil in front of the TV as results slowly dribbled in from throughout the country: no red states, no blue states, no touch-screen maps, exit poll results, micro-analysis of key precincts or quickly “declared” states after posted results of miniscule numbers of votes cast.
No matter. We recognized the importance of elections, and yes, of every vote cast.
On the eve of the 2008 election, I am told by newscasts, newspapers and Web sites that some of that excitement I experienced as a child found its way back into this election: high levels of voter registration, millions of early voters and requests for absentee ballots, huge political rallies for both candidates and predictions from voting officials from coast to coast of long lines at the polls and record numbers of voters expected.
Why now? Why this election? Why such a buzz when no such energy and excitement accompanied most elections since I sat at the kitchen table in our suburban home in 1960 at 4 a.m. and listened to my Mom talk on the telephone with relatives in New York, who wanted to know “What’s going on in Illinois?”
That 1960 election between Sen. John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon drew 63.1 percent of registered voters. Only the 1964 election between Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson and Sen. Barry Goldwater (61.9) and Nixon’s return in 1968 against Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey (60.8) drew more than 60 percent.
During those previous national election years, the U.S. has faced wars, economic crisis, a female vice presidential candidate, a troubled education system, concerns about foreign countries and their nuclear status and a host of other worrisome issues. Candidates questioned each other’s leadership skills and all pledged, “change.”
I know that with some historical perspective, I’ll get an answer to my questions.
But in the meantime, I am going to savor the notion that Americans might get back into the civic-engagement game on Nov. 4, 2008, and exercise their most valuable right: to vote in a free election for the candidates of their choice.
I hope you join me in doing that.
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