I Voted Today...

I voted today, of course.

In my home, growing up, voting was considered a responsibility of citizenship and an honor. We were Americans - some naturalized and some by birth - and it was something that all good Americans did.

We understood that another American right was the privacy of each voter’s choice. Although upcoming elections were discussed, we didn’t have to tell anyone how we had voted including other family members and I can’t ever remember them asking me how I had voted. To this day I don’t know how my parents were registered to vote although I strongly suspect they were independents – maybe just because in America they could.

They also made sure that we were aware that there were still people in other countries who were still fighting for the rights that so many Americans inexplicably took for granted.

I went to vote today, but I have to admit that it’s getting harder to feel like it makes any difference.

And that makes me sad.

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“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 (1882-1945