VOTING

Imagine this very moment you were told you could not vote! On anything! That certain individuals would make the laws and appoint people to serve as the voice of all the people. How would “you” react? I imagine there would be an enormous uproar!

I can remember 50 years ago – my husband’s grandmother Hannah, her day started at 5 a.m., riding two buses to work. On the return home, she would get off the bus four blocks before her normal stop, go to her polling place and vote. (This was the year JFK was elected president.) Then walk five blocks home. Don’t forget this is November in Tacoma – rain, cold, the norm.

I once asked her why doing all that just to vote was so important. The response was, “In 1898 when I was born, women couldn’t vote. In 1920, the 19th Amendment was passed, giving women the right to vote. It’s my obligation to vote!”

My mom, Henny, born in Sweden, became a U.S. citizen in the 1930s. The only and last time she didn’t vote – when she was almost 90 years old, in the nursing home and suffering from dementia.

My husband and I have told our kids –if you vote for no other reason than to honor those two women – and all those who have struggled to give us the right to vote!

I have always voted for those reasons, but there is another big, big reason! If I don’t vote, I would have absolutely no right to … aka complain. So I urge everyone to vote!

Joan Green

Moses Lake