Voting is a gift

Call it voter apathy, blame the rapid pace of modern life, or maybe that more than 75 percent of us are disenfranchised would explain why we don’t fulfill our responsibility to vote in elections.

While some discuss whether it’s most accurate to describe voting as a privilege, right or responsibility, we’d like to suggest an alternative descriptor: gift. Gift-giving is a concept we understand.

When the United States was founded, voting rights were extended to a much narrower group of people — only white men with land or sufficient wealth for taxation were permitted to vote.

Over the years, the Constitution has been amended six times to specifically extend voting rights to various groups of citizens: the 14th, 15th, 19th, 23rd, 24th and 26th amendments were passed between 1868 and 1971.

These amendments state that voting rights cannot be denied or abridged based on: birth, race, color, previous condition of servitude, sex, for failing to pay a tax or based on age.

Without these amendments, the majority of modern Alaska and U.S. citizens would be ineligible to vote under the U.S. Constitution adopted on Sept. 17, 1787, by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Penn. In this modern era, most of us have received the gift of voting, but choose not to use it. In the borough election earlier this month, just 18.5 percent of those registered used their gift to cast a ballot at the polls.

The gift of voting has been passed to us from the bloodstained, calloused hands of one of the more than 2,857,648 members of the military who have fought and died to protect our precious gift, our vote.

We’ve heard all sorts of excuses given for why most of us don’t bother to vote. None of them are valid when weighed against the price already paid on the battlefield. More than flags on our vehicles and homes, more than shoveling soldiers’ walks in the winter and mowing yards in the summer, we owe each service member the honor of valuing the gift they carried home in their rucksacks for each of us.

There’s a photo making its rounds on the Internet recently of a 93-year-old World War II veteran in Hospice care casting his absentee ballot with a little help from his daughter. It will likely be his last time voting and one of his last acts on this Earth. But even on his deathbed, Frank Tanabe still made time to vote.

Thanks to a new online voting system, Alaskans will have a new way to use their gifts on Election Day Nov. 6. A new system rolled out this month lets voters request a ballot be emailed or faxed to them and allows voters to return their signed ballots via Internet or fax.

We recognize this system will help some folks get to the polls who had legitimate logistics issues voting, but we do not expect it to be a panacea for low voter turnout. As always, it is up to individuals to not take their right to vote for granted.

With another important election around the corner, we urge everyone to remember that democracy was never intended to be a spectator sport. It works best with full participation.