Voting is my job. Voting is your job. It’s Job One for us as Americans.
When we go to the polling place, enter the voting booth and cast our ballot, we are doing Important work. Essential work.
As electors, we are directly involved in determining who will serve us — all of us — in public office and indirectly in determining the policies that will guide the actions of government and the decisions on who will be helped and how.
As citizens and as human beings, you and I have a responsibility to work to make the world a better place, and voting is the way we do that by carrying our part of the burden of government.
If we fail to vote, we fall down on the job.
If we vote carelessly and thoughtlessly, we pervert our sacred task.
Our vocation as citizens
Our vocation as citizens is to study the candidates and their policies, to weigh their characters and past actions and to evaluate them in the context of the needs and aspirations of the people. And then — only then — to enter the booth and mark our ballot.
We live in the real world, and no candidate is going to perfectly match up with us on all the issues. We can’t expect that. We have no right to demand that.
It is our task, our responsibility, to assess the candidates based on what we view as the most important issues and determine which one will do a better job.
If we huff and puff about their imperfections and stay at home on election day, we are turning away from the hard work we are called to. We are shirking our moral duty.
Each one of us governs
Voting is not just a right. Each one of us governs. Through voting, each one of us takes responsibility for making our government as humane, ethical and equitable as possible.
This is our task in every election on all levels of government but, particularly, every four years when the nation’s president is chosen.
The quality of a mayor will affect the lives of the people of a city, but the quality of a president not only impacts the hundreds of millions of Americans but also the seven billion people on earth.
Having an impact
Through voting, we have an impact on the lives of all those people. And on our own lives.
It’s my job. It’s your job.
Just do it.
Patrick T. Reardon
11.1.16
Written by : Patrick T. Reardon
For more than three decades Patrick T. Reardon was an urban affairs writer, a feature writer, a columnist, and an editor for the Chicago Tribune. In 2000 he was one of a team of 50 staff members who won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. Now a freelance writer and poet, he has contributed chapters to several books and is the author of Faith Stripped to Its Essence. His website is https://patricktreardon.com/.