I’ll just tell you right off that the main reason I vote is because my parents did. But I have a bunch of other reasons besides that. I get upset when I hear a good many citizens today say they are disillusioned with governments and they don’t think one person’s vote makes any difference. Another complaint is that politicians promise anything to get elected, but once in office they fill the bills they vote for with pork and vote only when self interest is involved. Then, too, for some eligible voters it seems a waste of time to vote on propositions when that is all that is on the ballot.

Even if all of these were true, there would still be a very good reason for voting. In fact, if all of these were true, the only way to turn it around would be for a majority of voters to demonstrate the demand for change. So complaints like the aforementioned are really just excuses for having something else to do instead of making the effort to cast a vote.

The stereotyping of politicians of one or both sides of the fence as idiots or tricksters just encourages that kind of behavior. You know the old saying that one “might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb.”

No one should be surprised if representatives of the different parties say that, if they are going to be accused of malfeasance, then they should at least have the pleasure of living up to their reputation, or down to it, as the case may be.

Some voters don’t really have the courage of their convictions and so can be swayed by hearing the opposition ridiculing their candidate. In this way, snide remarks and name calling can skew the results. Fortunately we have a secret ballot to counteract this phenomenon. There is no real purpose served by mudslinging. Everybody comes out looking dirty, and many voters lose their taste for politics, not to mention the possible candidates who decide against having their good name dragged through the slime.

Some voters are just too lazy to study the issues and are mostly interested in coming out on the winning side, whatever it is. “Might makes right” is not much different from “the majority rules” in some cases.

Yet whatever an American citizen’s stand is on politics, we all have a common history. Some of this history relates to a time when not only did we not have social security, but we didn’t have the money to pay the troops. After the Revolution, when a good many of our soldiers were still on duty because a host of British redcoats were still hanging around New York, some of our men began agitating for their pay in Philadelphia. Congress thought it best to transfer its business quarters to New Jersey. This arrangement caused George Washington to end up near Princeton at a rented house named Rockingham (also called Berrien Mansion). In the Blue Room of this two-story house at Rocky Hill, Washington drafted his Farewell to the Armies.

Famous for sticking by his troops in all their hardships, epitomized by the winter at Valley Forge, Washington, in his words to his soldiers, communicated gratitude for their service even when they were patiently suffering and when they were demonstrating their “invincible fortitude in action.” His greatest wish for them was that “ample justice be done them here,” and that “the choicest of heaven’s favours both here and hereafter, attend those who, under the divine auspices, have secured innumerable blessings for others.”

Folks, we are living in the “hereafter” that Washington had reference to, and we are those “others” for whom those early veterans “secured innumerable blessings.” Wouldn’t they all turn over in their graves if they could hear some of our excuses for not exercising one of the greatest blessings they provided.

I want to personally thank the League of Women Voters for providing the Voter Guides at the Corsicana Public Library.

Also I am so proud of the Angels of Corsicana for the garage sale and donation center they provided recently. Ladies, that was the best hamburger I have had in a long time! You are a real inspiration!

As a member of James Blair Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, I subscribe to the DAR Magazine, and I keep nearly every issue. The information about Washington I found in the article “Rockingham: The Final Headquarters,” by Dawn K. Fairchild in DAR Magazine, October, 1999.

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Gelene Simpson is a Daily Sun columnist.

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