Is there anything more empowering than voting? I don’t think so. It’s our opportunity to have our voices heard at the highest and the lowest levels of our government.
It’s just what the founders of our democracy intended when they thought up this country of ours. Of course, they left out a few of us, like all women and nonwhite people. The founders weren’t perfect, but they sure had some great ideas and managed to write it all down in a way that has served the maintenance and continuity of our democracy very well.
I’m talking about our Constitution, but you knew that. They created a government with three equal branches — an executive with its president and cabinet departments, a congressional with Senate and House, and a judicial branch comprising the federal courts including the big one, the Supremes. Those founders thought that these three parts would each in their own way make sure our government would never slide toward a one-branch or one-man rule. They’d just finished fighting a war to become independent of the King of England and they didn’t want any part of that again.
Clearly, they wanted the citizens of this country to have a voice in its workings. And, yes, only the white property-owning guys were given that voice at first, but that’s some of the imperfect part. They gave the people the right to vote, to select the leaders who would serve the best interests of all (voters).
But one of the gravest imperfections shown by our founders was that they allowed the enslavement of millions of Black people brought to our shores from Africa against their will. It took a horrific war between the states who opposed slavery and those that refused to give it up, to finally free those enslaved people. New parts of the Constitution were written then to allow those people to become citizens with all the rights that accompany that, including the right to vote.
But writing things into law doesn’t always change reality. It took another 100 years of Jim Crow abuse and lethal violence before a great movement arose, the civil rights movement, that finally forced those former slave states to begin to treat the descendants of Black slaves as citizens of this country. But the struggle for equal rights for these Americans continues to this day, including for the right to vote.
Democracy is a fragile thing. It can only work so long as we all believe in it and keep it strong. And a big part of that is trusting that our elections are safe and secure and reflect the will of the voters. But we’ve just spent nearly two years hearing the defeated former president claim that the election of 2020 was stolen from him. After 61 courts rejected this claim, after his own attorney general called the claim an unpleasant epithet while stating there is no evidence to support it, and after he set an insurrection in motion at the U.S. Capitol in an attempted coup, he and his Republican Party are still screaming “fraud.” In multiple states, laws have been passed making voting more difficult based on the lie that there was rampant voter fraud, when there was none.
According to a Washington Post analysis “a majority of Republican nominees on the ballot this November for the House, Senate and key statewide offices — 299 in all — have denied or questioned the outcome of the last presidential election.”
Along with supporting Trump’s lie about a stolen election, some of these Republican candidates are also refusing to state clearly that they will accept the will of the people should they lose their elections. We have one of those election deniers running for governor on the Republican ticket right here in Massachusetts, Geoff Diehl.
Scarier still are the Republican election deniers running for state level positions that will oversee or have the power to influence voting in their states. Are those the people we want in charge of our elections? I don’t think so.
When the rule of law is no longer respected, when the peaceful transfer of power can no longer be assured, when voting districts are drawn to favor only one party, when we are no longer sure our votes can be safely and accurately cast for the candidates of our choosing, and when our courts no longer act in independent and nonpartisan ways and are making decisions based on political and religious views — then Democracy dies.
The midterm elections are now bearing down on us, just four weeks away and much hangs in the balance. Democrats hold a small majority in the House of Representatives and are split 50-50 with Republicans in the Senate. If Republicans take control of either or both legislative bodies, the march toward authoritarian rule will have taken a giant step forward. It will open the way for a second Trump presidency and that will surely be the end of all those great ideas of our founders.
Yes, I know that sounds like hyperbole, but I don’t think it is. We must do everything in our power to get people out to vote for Democrats on Nov. 8. Write postcards and letters, phone bank, text bank, go house to house, donate money if you can. And, most important, make sure you vote!
Karen Gardner, of Haydenville, can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.