Matt Cutts has “tagged” me has part of an effort to get people, especially young people, to register to vote. I’m happy to do my part, but I’m taking the tough love approach. No beautiful celebrities in some carefully scripted video. OK, I’ll give you the video below that’s part of this effort (as well as a super funny anti-vote one from the Colbert Report). But I also want to reflect on what voting means to me as well as the far more important fact that most of us live in democracies where voting is taken for granted, rather than in places where people are still literally dying for the right to vote. People dying to vote. Voting means something. It’s something that people should do. And the “damn kids” shouldn’t have to be coddled and enticed into it. Don’t want to read more? That’s fine. But at least learn about how to easily register to vote here.
About two years ago, back when I lived in Britain, we had a British general come to our village hall to talk about the war in Iraq. We lived in a small village full of British Army people, given we were near a major training area. The general was a former resident, invited back to talk about his experiences.
Expecting to hear the worse about those damn Americans and their gung-ho attitudes, as he’d been assigned to an American sector at a high-level, he actually expressed a huge amount of respect for what they’d been doing as well as the casualties they’d been taking, both from being assigned to the areas with the most unrest and being largely unprepared for insurgency tactics they faced (the British Army, after years of terrorist attacks from the IRA, has lots of experience here).
He avoided the political issue about whether the US and the UK should have gone into Iraq. However they got there, his focus was more on the challenge of stabilizing the security situation. He didn’t whitewash anything about how hard a task it was and deaths involved both among the military and civilians.
I was stuck by how he closed his presentation. He mentioned that most of the pictures out of Iraq focus on negatives. But the first elections had been held, and he showed picture after picture of people who’d gone out to cast their votes, even in some places where there were still security concerns about doing it.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not making a thank goodness we went into Iraq so people could vote pitch (I wasn’t for the war, if you care). But regardless of your feelings on it, you had people who voted and risked their lives to do so. This November, in contrast, virtually no Americans will worry that someone’s going to drive a suicide bomb into their voting place.
Iraq isn’t the only place like this. Oddly, it seems like you know when a country is getting use to voting freely for the first time (or again) when you see all those pictures of inked figures coming out in the news. That’s done as a way of showing who voted and preventing fraud. Here’s someone from Iraq who was looking forward to being old enough to have an inked figure, for being old enough to risk his life to cast a ballot.
And for the youth of America, here’s a video to beg them to do it:
I saw this last night and couldn’t make it halfway through. OK, I appreciate the effort behind it. And yeah, it’s funny in parts. But it felt a bit preachy and at times, almost insulting. Maybe it’s because I’m not the target audience.
Hey, want a real campaign? How about a purple finger one in the US. Show your inked finger to indicate you’ve registered. Show your inked figure when you actually vote. Do one or both as a way to reflect on the fact that you CAN vote (apparently there have been some attempts at this).
How about a video showing the people who have risked their lives to do it in other countries. Maybe we could lose a few of these celebrities and interweave a few people sharing what it means to them.
Clearly, I’m old and grumpy. I said damn kids, right? But somehow I grew up feeling that voting was very important. Maybe I had the right teachers. Maybe it was the time I was educated in (the whole salad bowl thing, right?). But of course you should vote.
Maybe it was being a science fiction fan. In Robert Heinlein’s classic Starship Troopers, not everyone got to vote. Only those who’d served in the military were able to. Heinlein’s been attacked because of this and other things as being militaristic. Perhaps. I just saw it as an interesting story — the idea that a vote had to be earned in some way. That it wasn’t handed to you.
Certainly I’m far from the first to talk about the issue that when voting is taken for granted, people often don’t bother voting. So maybe we should look at alternatives. I don’t mean disenfranchising people. But maybe there are other things that can be done. Register to vote, get $50 off your taxes. Register to vote and get a free bag of swag from companies that back the effort.
But please, can’t we figure out something better to do than these endless “Rock The Vote” style things that seem to happen year after year? Can’t we target everyone in some effective way long term to solve the problem, rather than feeling like it’s the same old problem each election. Let me register to vote when I sign-up for Facebook; open a Gmail account, whatever. Let’s get clever, into the 21st century. Let’s have day-of registration at the polls.
Anyway, back to the point. Register to vote, if you haven’t already. You can’t vote if you don’t register, and registration happens sooner than you might expect. Google got a new tool out that helps you learn how to register by just entering your ZIP code.
To my former expatriates, as usual, no one remembers us despite us collectively having a population larger than some US states. But most of you know the drill. Do the absentee ballot thing by starting here. You can drill into your state of last residence and see all the relevant deadlines for overseas votes. That will cover you for federal elections, at least. As for me, I’m looking forward to doing my voting in a real polling booth for the first time in 12 years. I always got a sense of purpose and almost reverence when voting this way in the past — and I can feel that rising up again.
On a personal note, I didn’t come back to California only to find that my state might rescind gay marriage. I encourage you to vote no on Proposition 8, if you’re a California resident. I have too many gay friends who have been through too much pain in along the path to eventually finding comfort to want them to have a setback in this way. The debate isn’t some theoretical argument for me. It involves real people that I know and love.
I also have to tag five other people to spread the message of registering to vote, so…
- Gary Price (This man knows everything about registration laws. Watch for his post)
- Greg Hernandez (Not a Proposition 8 supporter, plus godfather to my kids)
- Todd Friesen (Not even American, but having recently moved, let’s make sure he gets his better American half registered)
- Rae Hoffman (Let’s get an American expat to spread the word)
- Sergey Brin (He’s blogging now, so why not aim for the stars!)
And now go have a laugh. Stephen Colbert, in support of voter abstinence:
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Growing up, my father told me a few stories about his U.S. Army service in Korea. It was enough to give me awareness that life beyond our borders is very different from the peaceful neighborhood I lived in. In high school I learned about the major conflicts of our time; two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, and gained a better appreciation for the huge prices we have paid. When I turned 18 I registered for selective service and registered to vote, and have voted during every election since.
Later in life I learned more about the stark contrast of life between North and South Korea, and reflected on how much our sacrifices have changed that part and other parts of the world. I hope if or whenever the middle east conflict is over, the people in that part of the world can enjoy some improved quality of life and have appreciation for it.
Yay! Thanks for urging folks to vote.