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Making a Difference
Editorial:
Making a Difference
By the time most of you read this, Vermont’s biennial elections will be over... or not, depending on whether one of the candidates in the races for governor and lieutenant governor received more than 50 percent of the vote.
Either you voted... or you didn’t.
You decided to have a say in who’s going to run the state, make the laws, and change or maintain the policies that affect your life... or you kept silent.
Voting is like coming out. It’s not something you do just once, and that’s it, though certainly the first time has the potential for emotional intensity. Like two years ago. A lot of us came out personally and politically to get the civil unions law passed and to vote for the people who understood something about oppression and equality and had the courage to vote for the law.
There was a lot of intensity as we told our stories. There was even more as we endured slanderous, hateful speech from legislators who claimed to represent us, but decided that “The People” they should “Listen to” didn’t include any of us. And then, that fall, some of us worked on our first political campaigns: dropping off literature supporting pro-civil union incumbents, posting signs of our own urging Vermonters to “Keep It Civil,” licking envelopes, making phone calls to get out the vote.
And once the campaign was over, the intensity died down. Most of us just wanted to be left alone to live our lives free of harassment and with the same rights, privileges and responsibilities as our neighbors. We’d won a significant victory, got pushed back a little bit, but not enough to undo the law, and we thought we were done.
We’re not done. Democracy is never done. Deciding whether to come out happens every time we meet someone new. And voting, that minimal level of participation in civic life, happens every two years on the statewide level.
One of the last things my dad did was apply for an absentee ballot for the September primary election. He’d had his electoral say in 21 biennial elections, and he was looking for one more. But he died before he could fill out the ballot. It might have been his last regret.
In September I went to visit a friend – who was dying of malignant melanoma – when he was still able to sit in his recliner, and we talked about politics and the elections. He asked for my recommendations, though he wasn’t sure he’d live long enough to vote.
“Oh,” I said, “you can vote any time after October 7, stop by the town clerk’s office on your way to or from the doc’s office.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think I’m gonna be ‘stopping by’ much of anyplace,” he came back.
A couple of weeks later, he was no longer in the recliner, but in a hospital bed in the living room where he could watch TV and see the dogs and the changing leaves out the glass doors into the back yard. When I called, I asked his wife – also a friend – whether she’d been able to stop by and pick up a ballot for him. “He asked me just yesterday,” she said , “and I told him you’d call and remind us, you’d be all over it.”
It took a few more days for the logistics and the priorities to align, but she got the ballot, and mere days before he slipped into the visions and dreams that sometimes come with slow death, she read him the choices and she put an x in the box for the candidates he chose. He signed the affidavit and the ballot went in.
That’s two deaths in my circle this fall: one who wanted to vote and couldn’t, another who made sure even death wouldn’t interfere with the chance to have his political say.
Some of us work so hard to get to vote, while others ignore the chance – for whatever reasons. We’re not scared enough, or involved enough, or angry enough.
With the example of my dad and my friend so freshly before me, I cast my ballot on October 16th.
We’re seeing now whether enough of us chose to vote to keep the gains we’ve made. We’re seeing now how many of us thought we were done when the election of 2000 was over. We’re seeing now how important it is to sustain some level of commitment and purpose and energy for the long political haul.
We’re seeing now whether we’ve made a difference.