I think voting is and ought to be a crucial part of the American experience. For being one of our most powerful American rights, most of the people I know don’t truly consider it a right. Food, water, shelter – those are rights. Voting? Well, that’s ‘special’. It’s a civic duty! It’s so important you only need to participate ‘some of the time’. What if a politician told you that your body only needs food ‘some’ of the time? You’d be outraged! And what of the ‘body politic’?

A year ago, I was with the homeless in McPherson Square – a dozen or so blocks from the US Capitol. Now those are people whose rights were forgotten about. I heard the same sentiment echoed over-and-over: “Muriel Bowser ‘ain’t doin’ nothin’ about us.” These people can’t vote. They hardly know where their next meal is coming from. I remember a bit of wisdom of them told me:

“Do you want to know who the most popular candidate is?: Nobody. If nobody was a candidate you could vote for by not showing up, nobody would win every election.”

And what of us? With election day on a Tuesday, how can some of our poorest vote? You can’t just tell people living paycheck-to-paycheck that $40 dollars isn’t important. And that’s the problem. We ourselves – the American people – can hardly vote, most of us aren’t truly given the capacity. Once we start thinking about ‘voting’ as a fundamental right – like water – then everything else will follow: ranked choice voting, electoral college, education, workweek holiday, etc. Then we have a democracy.

I remember several months ago sitting outside an elementary school on a cold November morning. I saw a large group of people huddled together in line wanting to do one thing: make their voices heard. I was serving as an election official that morning  in my fluorescent election vest also waiting in the cold, like all those people in line. I was waiting for a car to pull up to the designated parking spot to help the disabled and elderly vote in the same election as those people in line.

I know that standing outside in below freezing temperatures at a polling location isn’t going to be the joy of everyone’s day. I know the disappointment of finding out a candidate you voted for lost in their election, but what I saw that morning shocked me: I saw peace. I saw political canvassers from across the isle – trading snacks and talking about their work yesterday. There were shipbuilders in line talking about football, and there was a mother explaining to her kids the importance of respecting people’s opinions.

It is easy to forget that even with all of democracy’s failings – peace is the norm. We think of events that of January 6th as abhorrent and rare – not the norm. My mother immigrated from the Philippines and she sometimes tells me stories about the political life she was raised in. She lived under Ferdinand Marcos from the mid-60s until the mid-80s when democratic values were fleeting. She told of Communist guerilla fighting, of Islamic insurrectionists in Mindanao, and of Marcos’ martial law. She came to the United States because she wanted peace, and for that same reason democracy matters to me.