Today is Election Day. I don’t think I’m being overly dramatic when I say today is the day we decide the fate of our democratic republic.
As the oft-quoted phrase says, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
(Side quest: This quote is misattributed to Edmund Burke, who never wrote anything like it. The closest similar quote is “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing,” by John Stuart Mill.)
Not voting today (assuming you haven’t early voted or absentee voted) is the equivalent of looking on and doing nothing.
And I’m not just talking about the presidential election. For those of us in West Virginia, the state’s electoral votes going to Trump are all but a foregone conclusion. But the president is not the only office on the ballot.
The governor is on the ballot.
The state Attorney General is on the ballot.
The Secretary of State is on the ballot.
State senators are on the ballot.
State delegates are on the ballot.
County commissioners are on the ballot.
And all of those races can be decided by a just a handful of votes.
So even if you’re feeling disillusioned by the race for president, don’t disenfranchise yourself by refusing to vote at all. You can choose to write in a fictional character or yourself, or to not vote for president at all, if that’s what your conscience needs. But your vote still matters in all of those down-ballot races.
Because reproductive freedom is on the ballot. West Virginia already has one of the most extreme abortion bans in the country, and there’s a push from the far-right to make it even more restrictive by eliminating exceptions and codifying personhood at conception. Every tightening of the “pro-life” screw threatens essential medical care for women: Not just in the case of a pregnancy emergency, when doctors may be afraid to act, but also routine care as OBGYNs flee anti-abortion states.
Because education is on the ballot. The Hope Scholarship and increasing privatization of K-12 education is draining resources from our public schools and forcing the close and consolidation of our neighborhood schools. The Legislature’s war on higher education is threatening the ability of West Virginians to pursue (and afford) college degrees.
Because privacy and personal freedom are on the ballot. For all the bellowing “conservative” — and I use that term loosely — lawmakers do about “personal freedom,” they are determined to legislate what we (women and men) can do with our bodies and when, what kind of medical care/interventions we can seek and for what, how we can present ourselves in public, and how we raise our children. They are forcing their private religious beliefs into our public spaces — including schools — even as they dictate what we can and cannot do in our own personal lives.
Our rights are on the ballot today, and it doesn’t just have to do with who becomes president. Because even if the wannabe-dictator doesn’t win, our rights and freedoms are still in jeopardy at the state level. And that is why your vote does matter.
Today is your day to do something. So go vote.
J. Nelson - Writer 