Your Sovereign Duty as a Democratic Citizen
This coming Tuesday is election day. The conclusion to over a year of debates, primaries, candidates and controversies. For many of us in the GCS community, this is the first election in which we are eligible to vote. The United States, one of the mere twenty “full democracies,” is a minority amongst the nations of the Earth. We are privileged with this opportunity to help shape how our nation is governed.
It is easy to take this for granted, especially with the hyperbole and rhetoric of “rigged elections” that once emanated from the Sanders campaign and that has now found its way into the Trump camp. It is your sovereign duty to ignore this malicious sloganeering to explain the failings of poor candidates.
It is your sovereign duty to go out and vote this November 8 if you are of age. If you don’t you will be abusing a privilege that millions sacrificed for, either by fighting and dying for democracy, giving up time and effort to participate in the process, or by immigrating from an unfree nation. If you do not vote you will be neglecting the billions who long for your opportunity, from Russia, to China, to Venezuela, to vote in mostly free, mostly fair elections.
While it may seem difficult to imagine a life or nation without the democratic process, especially in a nation that has been a democracy for most of its lifetime, the recent collapse of democracy in Turkey, Venezuela and Russia go to show the fragility of our system of governance. Voting and participating is the only way to continue to sustain our democratic system.
Many have decided to abstain because they dislike our current crop of candidates, but even a protest vote or a write in allows you to display to the world your dissatisfaction, removing legitimacy from the “mandate” of the winning politician.
So please, come Tuesday, exercise your rare right to vote, do your sovereign duty for having the privilege to be a free democratic citizen.