Keown: Your right and responsibility to vote

Everybody’s doing it. During the last couple of weekends you couldn’t buy groceries in Somerville, go to church downtown, or exit the ‘T’ in Dorchester without hitting a folding table of folk hoping to register you to vote. And God bless them, every one.

We need these people. And we’ll keep needing them until we get ourselves sorted out and permit same-day registration for elections. Or until more of us start to care more about the privilege of participating in a free democracy.

It happens every poll-cycle. Election day rolls around and an abundance of our peers don’t vote because they can’t. They hadn’t registered in time. There is no excuse since we all know that registering is a necessity and is our responsibility. But when it’s a month ahead of time it doesn’t seem like a priority until it’s too late. Then there is the 50 to 60 percent of us who just don’t bother — because “politics don’t affect me,” “my vote doesn’t make any difference,” “they’re all the same,” and other nonsense.

“Election results affect all of us whether we believe it or not,” said Gobnait Conneely of the Irish Immigration Center, part of a crew registering those passing by at Fields Corner. “We can complain about how we don’t like what’s happening or we can do something about it.”

 In South Africa’s Apartheid museum in April, I saw photos from the first free elections there in 1994. Lines stretched for miles and people walked for days to get to polling booths. Tell them that politics doesn’t affect them. Or people in Zimbabwe right now. Or Kenya. Or consider whether it wouldn’t have made any difference had Al Gore not George Bush won in 2000 — and not because of a court decision but because of 80 million voters who didn’t.    

Democrat or Republican, Capitol Hill or Beacon, our apathy contributes to the broken politics we use as a reason for disengagement. If they know we’re watching, they know they have to earn our support to keep their job.
"Voting is a responsibility, not just a right,” said Simon Fowler, explaining his presence behind a table in Park Street Church on Sunday morning. “This is about keeping government accountable for doing what is important and just.”

 Fowler is an immigrant from England so can’t register. Many behind Conneely’s table were teenagers too young to vote; but not to care. What’s your excuse?      

Thomas Keown is  a freelance writer living in Somerville. He can be reached at thomaskeown@hotmail.com