The Thrill of the Vote
This post first ran on election day in 2008. I’ve run it several times since then. My feelings on the subject haven’t changed:
It’s election day in Chicago. I just walked home from voting for a new mayor and a new alderman–and I miss my old neighborhood.
For ten years I lived in South Shore: a white graduate student/small business owner/writer in a neighborhood dominated by the African-American middle class. My neighbors were police officers, schoolteachers, fire fighters, electricians, and social workers. We didn’t have much in common most of the year–except on election day.
As far as I’m concerned, voting is thrilling. My South Shore neighbors agreed. Voting in South Shore felt like a small town Fourth of July picnic. Like Mardi Gras. Like Christmas Eve when you’re five-years-old and still believe in Santa Claus. No matter what time of day I went to vote, my polling place was packed. Voters and election judges greeted each other–and me–with hugs, high fives, and “good to see you here, honey”. First time voters proudly announced themselves. Elderly voters told stories about their first election. People made sure they got their election receipts; some pinned them to their coats like a badge of honor. An older gentleman sat next to the door and said “Thank you for exercising your right to vote” as each voter left. The correct response was “It’s a privilege.”
Except for occasional confusion when the machine that takes the ballots jams, my current polling place is low key. Election judges are friendly and polite, but hugs are not issued with your ballot. When the young woman manning the machine handed me my receipt, she told me to have a good day. I said “It’s always a good day when you get to vote.” In South Shore, that would have gotten me an “Amen.” In politically active, politically correct Hyde Park, it got me an eye-blinking look of surprise and a hesitant smile.
I started home, thinking maybe I was the only one in the neighborhood whose pulse beat faster on election day. A block from the polls I ran into a young man walking with a small boy, no more than six years old. The little boy stopped me, with a grin so big that he looked like a smile wearing a woolly hat.
“Did you vote yet?” he asked. “My dad is taking me to teach me how to vote.”
“It’s a privilege,” I said.
He gave me the highest five he could manage.
* * *
So tell me, did you exercise your right to vote? It is indeed a privilege.
You Can’t Vote Because
I first ran this post in 2011. I think it is an even more important reminder today.
![[Suffragists in parade] (LOC)](http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3033/3313669287_b8229543b5.jpg)
From sixth century Athens on, who has the vote and why has been a touchy and evolving subject in democracies. People who already have the vote have hesitated to extend it to others for two basic reasons. Those with the vote don’t think those without the vote have the capacity to make good choices. Those with the vote fear they will lose power.
Over the centuries, people in power have come up with plenty of reasons not to extend the franchise to those who don’t yet have it. Here are a few of the classics:
You can’t vote because
- You’re a slave
- You’re a woman
- You don’t own property
- You don’t own enough property
- You don’t practice the right religion
- You are the wrong race or ethnicity
- Your father or grandfather couldn’t vote
The United States presidential election is next Tuesday. If you’re lucky enough to have the vote, use it.*
*This is a handy primer on exercising you voting rights in the United States: https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/voting-rights Pass it on to anyone you think might need it.
From the Archives: A Woman’s Right to Vote and Germany’s 1932 Presidential Elections
When national elections occur here in the United States I always run a few relevant posts from the archives, because I don’t think it is possible to overemphasize how important the right to vote it. This ran for the first time in 1921
“Women! Millions of men without work. Millions of children without a future. Save the German family. Vote for Adolf Hitler!”
I’m still working my way through the articles Sigrid Schultz published under her by-line in the Chicago Tribune as part of my research for the new book. I’ve reached the days just after the run-offs for presidential election of 1932, in which Paul van Hindenburg defeated Adolf Hitler by a margin of 6,000,000 votes. People thought it was all going to be okay. Schultz quoted more than one politician who said something along the lines of “The republic is saved!”
Writing on April 11, 1932, Schultz reported that five people died on the day of the run-off. (Many more had died during the campaigns leading up to the election.) Her description of one of the deaths caught my attention for a number of reasons, including the fact that it wasn’t a result of the frequent street battles between Nazis, Communists, Steel Helmets (veterans of the German Imperial army who longed for the good old days of the Kaiser*) and the Reichsbanner men (armed civilian supporters of the Weimar Republic). Instead:
The wife of a 67 year old Munich laborer struck her husband with his cane when he attempted to tell her how to vote and he fell dead.
Women gained the right to vote with the revolution that established the Weimar Republic. Thirteen years later, Hitler and his minions wanted to take away women’s right to vote and offered them marriage and “chivalrous devotion”in its place.** Apparently one woman took her right to vote seriously.
* When push came to shove, most of them voted for a Fascist dictator since they couldn’t put the Kaiser back on the throne.
**As Schultz pointed out in an article dated March 12, it wasn’t clear how the Nazis were going to organize enough husbands and “chivalrous devotion” to go around, given that women outnumbered men in Germany by more than two million.