Voter turnout is the ‘win

Sometimes it’s the simplest message that gets the point across—the simplest message what was printed in huge white letters on those bright red billboards that popped up across the area late last month.

“Vote Dec. 12” is all the billboards had printed on them. It apparently drove the point home because voter turnout far exceeded expectations in the Alabama special election for the U.S. Senate seat.

Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill had estimated that voter turnout would be about 25 percent. That was an educated guess based on the numbers. Eighteen percent of Alabama’s 3.3 million registered voters turned out for the Aug. 15 Republican and Democratic primaries in the special senate election. Voter turnout for the Sept. 26 GOP runoff between Roy Moore and the incumbent Luther Strange was 15 percent.

But Dec. 12 more than 1.3 million of Alabama’s 3.3 million voters participated for a turnout of 40.4 percent, according to numbers from Merrill’s office.

Voter turnout in Coffee County was 36.52 percent. Voter turnout in Dale County was 34.87 percent.

That people turned out to vote is wonderful. That is—realistically—a win regardless of who the votes were for. I know that statement is seen as heresy to some but sometimes it really is that basic. “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer,” is what the 35th president of the United States John Kennedy once said. “Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”

It’s the voters who have the power. No elected official is the answer to any of our problems. We are.

I tell the story often of a nearby city where a mayoral election was held and everyone was completely sure the incumbent would win. They were so sure the incumbent would win that most of the people didn’t turn out to vote. In what people called a “political upset,” the novice challenger won the election.

We can, quite literally, change pretty much anything we want to change about this country, this state, this county and this city.

It is true that one individual vote will not change an election, a reason cited by many as their reason not to vote. But if everyone believes their vote will not have an impact, then the entirety will fail to make their voices heard.

Low voter turnout has become a troubling trend almost everywhere in this country. That is why a 40.4 percent voter turnout is, perhaps, a game changer.

It is how our government is designed to work. You want to “take America back?” It’s easy. Vote.

Voting is a constitutional right that many fought and died for. Not voting is allowing a minority to rule over the majority.

Have we already forgotten the news reports from Iraq in 2005 when Iraqi citizens lined up for hours to participate in the country’s first free election, conducted under the watchful eye of the United States military? Pictures flashed around the world of smiling voters holding up their purple ink stained fingers with pride. The purple sign that they had indeed voted came to represent the hard earned freedom to vote.

Merrill told a reporter that he increased his prediction about voter turnout after he started seeing an increase in the number of absentee ballots requested. “I think it’s because more people are becoming more energized about the race here at the end and they want to make sure their vote is counted.”

Showing up to vote is the best way to make a difference, one vote at a time.

And—a final note—when people don’t exercise their right to vote, assuming that the next guy will, it shouldn’t be called a “political upset.”

Michelle Mann is a staff writer for The Southeast Sun and Daleville Sun-Courier. The opinions of this writer are her own and not the opinion of the paper. She can be reached at (334) 393-2969 or by email at [email protected].