City Life: Society needs your vote
On Sept. 27, 1948, President Harry S. Truman was traveling through Texas on one of his “whistle-stop” campaigns trips across the country.
With him on the train was a young Texas congressman who had just been certified as the Democrat Party nominee for senator in the general election. The certification took a month; the congressman won by 87 votes.
The new senator thrived. In 1951, he was elected by his colleagues to the position of majority whip, followed two years later by his selection as minority leader, the youngest minority leader in the history of the Senate. The senator won a second term in 1954, a year in which the Democrats regained control of Congress. Sen. Lyndon Johnson was then named majority leader.
Fifteen years after winning that crucial contest by 87 votes, Johnson became the nation’s 36th president.
There are many reasons for you to avoid the polls Tuesday. I know how busy you are, or how you may not have studied the issues enough to make an informed decision. I know how much you dislike waiting in line, a real possibility at some polling places in the mornings and early evenings. I also know how much you believe that if you stay away from the polls, no one is really going to miss your vote. And to be honest, I would not put up much of an argument on that last point.
But there is a larger reason for voting, one that must transcend how you feel today, how busy you are or how fed up you are with the whole campaign season.
Your vote today is one of the greatest privileges ever bestowed by a society on its people. The election process in which you must participate today was created more than 200 ago by a group of men who risked their lives.
The Founding Fathers had a dream for you, a vision of a land in which there was no oppression — a land in which you were free to make your fortune by any legal means. Their dream was that you would willingly participate in regular elections to help choose the people who would be making some of the most important decisions of your life — whether to go to war, to raise or lower taxes and how to spend whatever tax revenue is collected.
On Tuesday, you will not be voting on such national issues. But as I have written in this space many times over the years, your votes will have more effect on your day-to-day life than your vote for president did two years ago.
This is not a day to leave decisions to someone else. Most important, this is a day for you to set one of the most important examples of your life for your children.
I do not vote by mail, and for several years, I’ve dragged my kids to the polling place. Once in a while I let them work the voting machine with me. I did this because I wanted them to see the process and to understand how important it is. I wanted them to see adults lining up after a long day for the privilege of choosing those who would lead us for the next few years.
I consider each election day as one of the proudest days of my life, and I wanted my kids to understand why.
If you are registered, you must vote. In a local election, where the ballot numbers are so small, the 87 votes that once led to a presidency could be just eight that will lead to someone you like or dislike being elected to the City Council. It could even be just one — yours.
STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer. Send story ideas to smi161@aol.com.