12 Oct 08 Why I Vote
It’s election season in North America. In two days, Canadians go to the polls and a few weeks later our American neighbours will be doing the same thing. I was talking to some colleagues from work the day after Barak Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic convention when the announcement of the Canadian election was imminent and everyone was talking politics. We mused about how democracy, such a simple concept, has been implemented in so many different ways around the world. Here in Canada, you may as well vote for a street sign because you are voting for the party not the candidate in your riding. In the U.S, you vote for the man (hopefully one day soon we’ll be able to say “man or woman”) you feel is most qualified to lead the country, not the party. We have leadership conventions where you have to be a party member to vote and presidential nomination campaigns where the electoral college decides. I was born and raised in South Africa and I didn’t have the right to vote until I was 36 years old. Democracy meant “one man, one vote” and every vote was fair and equal. It was the vote that was important not the logistics of the election process and I can’t help thinking that we’ve lost sight of that in North America.
A few days later I had an opportunity to enjoy the company of my extended family on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I found myself sitting by the pool listening to a conversation my uncle was having with an old friend from South Africa. We come from a culture of story telling where the truth isn’t always allowed to get in the way of a good story, but these stories were being told with beautifully understated grace. They talked about the old days in South Africa. About the things they had seen and lived through. About the struggle to preserve your dignity without the right to say or do anything about the decisions that affected your life.
“these four well dressed African men all wearing these smart hats were standing on the corner when suddenly a police van pulled up. They were all thrown in the back and driven away because they couldn’t produce their passes quickly enough. And as the van drove away I saw their hats laying in the dirt, they probably never saw them again”
“he was a small man who spoke in a hgh pitched voice. He kept pacing up and down demanding to know what we were doing there. His wife, who was very calm, said please sit down they’re here to help us keep our house”
“we saw such cruelty, unspeakable cruelty”
I felt humbled as I heard them speak about life without the right to vote. And thankful to them and the thousands like them who were never afraid to speak out against injustice and cruelty. It’s because of them that I will exercise my right to vote on Tuesday. For my father who died at the age of 61 and never had the right to vote. For my mother, who passed away last year, who never let us accept what was so clearly unjust. For my grandmother, who is 98 years old today, who has more integrity in her little finger than most politicians will ever know. For my four year old son who must never know life without a right to vote.
Because when you cut through the party rhetoric it all comes down to the one simple basic right that allows us all to speak up about how we want to live our lives. Because when the unemployed worker lines up at the polling station beside the wealthy corporate banker, their votes are equal. Because it is one of the only ways we can hold our politicians accountable. Because life without the right to vote is unimaginable.
So whether you vote conservative or liberal, strategically or with your conscience, or even if you spoil your ballot because you are so disenchanted with the choices being offered, please vote. By voting we let our politicians know, in no uncertain terms, that we do care about the decisions they make on our behalf and we will hold them accountable.
That’s why I will be voting on Tuesday, what about you?
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