Kindling a passion for democracy here at home

On June 26, 2004, two women were killed and 13 others were wounded when a bomb hit the bus carrying them to a voter registration site in Afghanistan. One of the women who died was a U.N. worker, the other an Afghan woman who simply wanted to register to vote.

This was only one of many instances of violence against election workers and citizens seeking to vote in Afghanistan. But it doesn’t seem to be stopping the Afghan people from doing what they have to do to get to the polls on October 10.

To be sure, the total number registered in that country is a bit too good to be true. Out of an estimated eligible population of some 9.5 million, almost 10.5 million have registered, a sleight of hand that has led to fears that multiple registrations may be setting the stage for fraud.

But however rough and ready the electoral process may be at this point, the fact that the Afghan people are passionately committed to it seems indisputable. And with New York’s voter registration deadline upon us and the U.S. elections less than a month away, the type of spirit that keeps Afghan people swarming to register literally in the face of death ought to give us pause.

Voter participation rates in this country have been declining over the past 40 years. In 1964, the percentage of voting-age citizens who actually cast a vote in the presidential election stood at 69 percent; in 2000, that number was down to 60 percent. For a while now, it seems, we have either been taking our democracy for granted, or indulging ourselves in the cynical attitude that our votes don’t make a difference anyhow, and maybe a little bit of both.

The good news is that there is some evidence that this discouraging trend may have been reversed this year. The closeness of the 2000 presidential election, which was decided by a scant 537 votes in Florida, probably has something to do with that. With results that close, it’s easy to believe that your individual vote may indeed make a difference. The fact that this year’s election seems similarly close is probably another contributing factor.

For these or other reasons, polls taken early this year showed that interest in the current elections had already exceeded levels of interest that weren’t reached in 2000 until right before election day. And voter registration has been soaring all over the country. Some places in Pennsylvania, where registration is already closed, reportedly experienced almost double the number of registrations this year as in 2000.

So far so good, as far as registration goes. Now, what will it actually take to get us to the polls?

Thomas Jefferson once wrote “The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots.” Maybe so. Maybe that’s why the Afghan people, who have to risk death to register and vote, are flocking to do so while we can’t be bothered because—the favorite reason for not voting cited in a Bureau of the Census study on the 2000 election—we’re “too busy.”

But let’s hope Jefferson is wrong. Let’s see whether, even in this peaceful and prosperous land, we can kindle in ourselves the passion for democracy that led that Afghan women to set out on a bus one June morning to make her way through dangerous territory for the sake of that one little thing: her vote. Let’s remember what a privilege our vote is and make ourselves heard.

Dr. Punnybone

Tropical Depression