On August 1st, all ballots are due to be mailed in for the primary election in the City of Seattle and King County. Have you filled out your ballot?
If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for… but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. – Robert A. Heinlein, in ‘The Notebooks of Lazarus Long’
The sample Seattle ballot has 21 candidates listed for the Office of Mayor of Seattle, and a third as many for each of two Seattle City Council seats. We are voting on King County Executive, Port Commissioner and one proposition that could result in higher sales taxes, and funding a County cultural access program.
Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
According to a Massachusetts voting site on the importance of voting, “Democracy is something we can’t take for granted. It needs our help.” They point out that elected officials pay less attention to communities with lower voter turnout, making fewer appearances in these neighborhoods and spending less resources on them. Through voting, we directly influence the government, and by not voting, we do as well. In the most recent national election, according to The Huffington Post and Pew Research, the U.S. had the ninth-lowest voting rate among the 35 developed countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting. – Charles Bukowski
As people in other countries fight, and die, over gaining the right to vote, in America every vote matters. According to a BorgenProject.org post written by Alysha Biemolt, there have been several cases in U.S. history where a few votes decided the issue. In 1839, a Massachusettes gubernatorial election was decided by two votes out of 102,066 cast. In 1974, a New Hampshire Senate race was decided by two votes out of 223,363. And in 2008, the Alaskan congressional race was decided by a single vote out of 10,035. Generations of Americans have struggled to win the right to vote for swaths of our population – women and minorities. According to the AskYourDadBlog, “my vote for President may be a grain of sand on the beach, but my local votes can be rocks… Because when I vote I know that I am not just voting for a candidate or a zoo or a judge, but I am also voting for the future.”
If we don’t cast a ballot, it’s going to end up in a situation where we’re going to have to cast a bullet. It’s either a ballot or a bullet. – Malcolm X