Blasting with Boyles
OPINION
By the time you read this you may have already voted by mail-in or you’re waiting for that November magic day to go exercise your franchise. To whom to do we owe this privilege that indeed men have given their lives for, for your right to vote?
Democracy, and we are a republic not a democracy, but democracy means rule by the people. It was a phrase that the Greeks of Athens used to describe their self-rule.
Some Romans carried on part of those policies and also in Venice, in the time of the doges. And after that voting was snuffed out by the powers that be. When this country broke from Britain in 1776, voting rights were based on property ownership, and white men over the age of 21 of the Protestant religion.
In 1830, our country dropped religion and property ownership as stipulations to vote. The first presidential election in 1789, states were given the power to regulate their own voting laws, and in some states Catholics, Jews, and Quakers were barred from voting.
We all know the struggle of women’s suffrage. And the Supreme Court once ruled that Native Americans were not citizens so they couldn’t vote either.
Filipinos were barred as late as 1925, unless they served three years in the Navy. Richard Nixon lowered the voting age to 18 in the 26th Amendment and now here we are.
Which brings me to my first experience voting. It was Lyndon Johnson versus Barry Goldwater in 1964, and at the time I was working in a steel mill and on election day, walking to punch your timecard, in what was the time shack, was my union representative. To man after man, he would snap a sheet of paper and hand it to you and say this is who your union endorses. Of course it was from Johnson to dog catcher, they were Democrats.
I, until recently, believed Republicans had tails, and now this day and age, I’m not sure they don’t. But I went with my dad, walked past all the poll watchers, and the union reps wearing what we used to call sandwich boards with Lyndon Johnson’s name on them. The bars were closed because if you can buy an Irishman drinks you can buy an Irishman’s vote.
So now we come to today.
As I said at the opening, men and women have given their lives for the right that you have beginning in the middle of October through voting day in November.
Now we come to this crossroads. What did we learn by a study of the world’s oldest democracy, but that the right to make this choice can easily be taken away.
But if you look at the complex system that we see in America today, developed in Greece and Rome, there is so much on the line. We have now dropped religion and property ownership, and everyone over the age of 18 that is a true citizen now will have the ability to change the course of this country.
Next month we will know.
— Peter Boyles