Election Day 2024 in the United States is just a little more than 2 months away.
Unfortunately, this fact is not of equal importance to all our citizens. Many people want no part of the hyperactive every four years campaigns to influence election outcomes.
Despite the TV ads, social media posts, yard signs and highway billboards some are convinced that none of this matters. They would say, all politicians lie and line their own pockets. Others have no idea how the system is supposed to work so, if asked about voting they say they are undecided or have decided to not get involved. Some people have one or two specific issues that affect them in a strong way. If a candidate or party holds the line on that issue, they vote for them. if not, they refuse to vote at all.
But for me, an elder woman whose father read the newspaper, cover to cover every evening, and later, talked back to the television screen during the evening news when he didn’t agree with what the broadcast journalist was reporting, a woman whose first husband was a radio broadcast journalist and who saw the connections between our values and what kind of world we wanted to live in and the larger body politic.
I accompanied him on a news assignment to report on a speech to be given by the up and coming civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. but met instead his father Martin Luther King Sr. who was standing in for his son. Martin Jr. was in a Birmingham jail. So, that happens in the larger political world, both at home and abroad has always been important to me and my life.
In the spiral of our evolving individual lives this election season may remind you, as it does me, of other elections and election outcomes. I was in an airport in 2000 when I learned that the Supreme Court had decided against my candidate, Al Gore in favor of Bush. What’s happened since has not been good for the environment though it has improved the mechanisms of how we vote, and technically how our votes get counted. (No more hanging chads.)
In the election of 2020 amid COVID we didn’t walk neighborhoods, but online calling became a popular way to get the vote out and help people submit their mail in ballots. I even worked online with people in GA, a key state like PA where I live. And the election came down to those two states. Elation this time when our candidate won – but horror at witnessing the first time in our country’s history where we did not have a peaceful transfer of power after an election.
As I set out to walk my near neighborhoods to help get the vote out this year I miss my dog. In 2008 and 2012 Clancy was a companion and conversation starter, and probably a small back up security measure for me when the sun started to go down. In 2016 we had a different dog, but Cody too is now gone, as is the anticipatory joy I felt hoping that I would help to elect and live to see our country elect our first woman president. That anticipatory joy and then dashing disappointment and sorrow of not accomplishing that goal created a deep grief for many women at the time yet the Women’s March that
followed in January fueled many women to run for office themselves and increase their participation in local elections. For sure, that loss has set up for me an increased determination to take part in this current election, since now, at the eleventh hour, a woman president seems a likely possibility that I can contribute my energies towards.
This year I’m particularly concerned about the bots, social media algorithms, and AI fakes that threaten to increase incidents of disinformation and misinformation making it harder to recognize the truth of images and written and spoken messages. The division these tech processes perpetrate, make it impossible to have conversations and respectful disagreement with our neighbors, as we rely on different, perhaps false information. The dissention we’ve been experiencing in families, friendships, and communities for the past several years, seems now to have escalated, putting at risk the continuation of our republic.
For me, these times call out for people of good will to do what we can to leave to our children and grandchildren a functioning government and community that honors the values we hold dear and protects the freedom of every person to reap the benefits promised to them by our constitution. I’m sure you know as I do, this year’s race promises to be close and winning is not guaranteed. But not taking part, that’s not an option. Join me and other patriots in walking the neighborhood and/or calling fellow citizens to encourage them to make a plan to vote, and then help them get the information and resources to actually do it.
Sheila
