Our greatest privilege

Today is a day when we truly can participate in our democracy, and help to shape the kind of communities in which we live. Oh, I know what you're thinking - these are just off-year elections, so why bother? A vast number of the candidates and issues on ballots across the country concern themselves only with local matters, and don't have the sweeping scale or drama of national politics.

But in many cases, the results of today's elections will have more of an impact on the day-to-day lives each of us leads than those "bigger" races, whether or not we actively take part. That's why there's little excuse not to - although so few of us actually do, any more.

In the 2002 midterm elections, for example, an appalling 37% of the voting age population managed to make it to the polls. Think about that. 37%! In a world where the specific person elected or issue passed can literally mean the difference between life and death, that figure is an inexcusable one.

Caroline Kennedy once wrote, in A Patriot's Handbook,

"The day when I feel most proud to be an American is not the Fourth of July, but Election Day. The right to vote is perhaps the most critical right in a democracy, the means by which we can create the kind of society that truly represents America."

It's been a mere 40 years since Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act, and the great privilege of casting our vote is one which should never be taken for granted. So make sure today to participate in America's great democratic experiment, before our spoiled, lazy indifference as a citizenry leads eventually to the loss of that most essential building block of free societies everywhere.

As they say in Chicago, "Vote early and vote often."