Voting...a right, a privilege and sometimes a chore
Submitted by Betsy on Tue, 10/14/2008 - 19:09
I've been struggling the past 37 days leading up to today....no, scratch that...I've been struggling for the past few years about who I will give my vote to.
For the first time ever I seriously considered spoiling my ballot....up until yesterday when I discovered that I'd face a $500 fine to do it publicly. If I destroyed my ballot, I would want to do it publicly....to do it in private is senseless. They'd have no idea if I was doing it in protest or if I was just a dope and didn't know how to mark a ballot.
Then again, I considered writing a little note on it to say I knew very well what i was doing...that i'd spoiled my ballot with sound mind.
I won't get into the reasons for my struggle because you've heard these arguments back and forth in various venues over the past 37 days.
My point is, this time voting was a struggle....a chore.
My political views make it impossible for me to vote Conservative. The Liberal platform, despite some glaring problems , was not enough for me to get past the fact that I just can't bring myself (despite trying) to see him as a strong effective leader.
The NDP, while running a strong leader, and a platform that suits my perspective, did not run a candidate in my riding. Well, they started to but he resigned amid discovery that he had said some not so nice things online about someone.
My riding has a strong Conservative history...I mean there's really no chance for anyone to beat them around here unless...well, i can't even think of an 'unless'....
So, I walked my dog over to the school (a small protest in my mind...i'll bring my dog and ruffle some feathers....no luck....everyone loved the dog).
I walked in and looked at my ballot. I wished I had lots of money so that I could slather the ballot in peanut butter and let my dog eat the ballot for all to see.
But you know, as funny as that would be, I just couldnt spoil it.
It hasnt even been 100 years since women got the right to vote. They struggled greatly for it and how terrible would it be for them to see a woman taking this right for granted.
So, I looked at the ballot and I thought about the debates I'd seen and the articles I've read.
And I cast my ballot for Elizabeth May and the Green Party. A friend of mine said recently "the Green Party has only one attribute and that's their stance on the environment". I said, without pause, "No, they also have a very strong leader in Elizabeth May".
So, Green it was for me.
And in a sense I guess some would say I got to spoil my ballot because they won't win.
With that attitude, in my riding any vote for a party other than Conservative is spoiled...and if everyone thought that way elections just wouldnt work would they?
So, my vote wasnt spoiled. My little vote will show that someone out there heard Elizabeth May.
I honoured the women like Nellie McClung who fought for a woman's right to vote....and I honoured a party with a strong commitment to the environment and a strong leader who went out there and did MORE than hold her own among the hard core politicians.
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Interesting article
Wow! Hard to believe that we weren't too different from Afghanistan a hundred years ago! Thanks ladies!
This is the story of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers, only 90 years ago.
Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.
The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed
nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking
for the vote. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'
They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night -- bleeding and gasping
for air.
They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.
Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop --infested with worms.
When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/prisoners.pdf
So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because- -why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?
Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.
All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege.Sometimes it was inconvenient.
My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history,
saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk
about it, she looked angry. She was -- with herself. 'One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,' she said. What would those women think of the way I use, or don't use, my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.' The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her 'all over again.'
HBO released the movie on video and DVD . I wish all history,
social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.
It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.'
Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know.
We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Remember to vote.
PS In Canada the women of Manitoba got the right to vote in 1916 thanks to the efforts of Nellie McClung and her colleagues. The rest of Canadian women were allowed to vote in federal elections when the Women's Franchise Act was passed in 1918. However, it was not until 1940 that the women of Quebec got the right to vote in provincial elections - the last province to accord them this right of suffrage.
Election
I have the same problem as you but for different reasons. I am a Conservative that believes in small Government, a minimum of government intrusion into its citizen’s lives, low taxation and freedom for all. Unfortunately there are no true Conservatives in Canada anymore. Michael Moore the radical left wing movie maker went to a recent Canadian leader’s debate and came away saying that all four of the party leaders were far left of the current day Democrats in the USA which will verify what I am saying. However I don’t have any far right Candidate to vote for so I have no choice but to vote for the Conservatives and hope that they can be fiscally responsible. Frankly I don’t know how anyone can tell them apart except for the 2% tax decrease and the income splitting change over the last two years. The Green Party, the NDP and the Liberals all split the socialist's voting bloc so that’s a good thing but in the long run it will really make no large difference in how this country is governed.