Flags mark the spot where a church or a school or a clubhouse has been temporarily remade as a voting site. Standing in line, waiting to get in, you feel a sense of purpose and sanctity.
Inside, you take your ballot and go to a small cubicle, where you make your choice, indicating who has earned your approval to take office and represent you. Perhaps you think on that day about how important your vote is. Perhaps you feel the weight of history.
After returning the ballot and getting a wearable sticker in return to announce to everyone that you have done your duty and exercised your franchise, you may have a moment of satisfaction: Whatever the outcome, you’ve had your say.
It’s a nice scenario, and one most adults have enjoyed at some point in their lives. But it’s worth noting, as we head toward a significant election, that the right to vote in the United States has never been serenely granted to one and all. People have had to fight for it — African-Americans, women, young people.
Just this past week, the states of Nebraska and Oklahoma restored the voting rights of felons who had completed their sentences. When the attorney general of Nebraska tried to stall the law, arguing it was unconstitutional, the state Supreme Court ordered the secretary of state to immediately put it into effect.
The voters of Nebraska and Oklahoma are more fortunate than those in Florida.
Florida voters, by a majority of almost 65%, passed a constitutional amendment in 2018 that would have restored voting rights to 1.4 million felons who had completed their sentences.
But newly elected Gov. Ron DeSantis and the GOP-majority Legislature quickly blocked the will of the voters by passing a law that allowed those rights to be restored only after the felons had paid their fines, which effectively disenfranchised most of them again.
This disgraceful law was upheld by a federal court, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, two of whose members had just joined the court after serving as DeSantis appointees to the Florida Supreme Court.
This sad episode of Florida history is a potent reminder of the fragility of the franchise. Nationally, the right to vote has been under attack from the U.S. Supreme Court, which weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in two landmark decisions in 2013 and 2021, spurring advocates to a push for a national right-to-vote law, named after the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis. That bill is currently languishing in Congress.
The right to vote, in other words, is a fight that is still being waged. It’s a hot war, and those who think the ballot is a sacred, impregnable symbol of our commitment to democracy must realize that when they get to vote — if the state hasn’t thrown up a barrier to them — they are taking part in an exercise whose future is not guaranteed.
More than that, though, they need to vote. We need to vote. Early voting in Palm Beach County began Monday, and as of Friday, 31.5% of the county’s nearly 900,000 eligible voters had cast ballots. That’s a good start, but to fulfill the meaning of the elective franchise, the need is critical to generate as high a turnout as possible come Election Day.
So study the issues, examine the candidates and get out there and have your say. For those who are voting by mail, get it done!
There’s no certainty that you’ll always have this precious right. Vote like you mean it.
