We could learn something from the Iraqis

America was once called an experiment.

We created a form of government to be directed by the will of the people. Our founders established a foundation of rights to endure the ages, then created a system flexible enough to change as America grew. Our leaders were not to be decided by birth, nor ruling class nor political party nor by a fatalistic determination of the divine. Nope. We the people decide.

We vote for our president, senators, congressmen, governors, state representatives, county commissioners, city council, etc.

By voting, you get to have a voice in determining our leaders.

We choose our leaders by having a loyalty to one of two major political parties or watching what candidates say are their plans should they be elected.

Our problem is not enough people vote. On Feb. 24, only 9 percent of registered voters took part in determining if school levies were to pass. In 2008, only 64 percent of registered voters took part in the presidential election, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

That’s not good enough.

To vote, we simply sign up and wait. The ballot is mailed to each voter. We vote and mail it back. Pretty simple.

But why don’t more Americans vote? Is it really that tough?

In Iraq, people faced death to cast their sole ballot in their nation’s elections.

“Insurgents used mostly rockets, mortars and explosive-filled bottles hidden under trash to terrorize voters on their way to the polls,” according to Rebecca Santana of the Associated Press. “With those tactics … (they) killed 36 people, almost all in Baghdad.”

In the Baghdad neighborhood of Hurriyah, a grenade was thrown into a crowd of voters and three were killed. Instead of stopping them from voting, local clerics called for people to go to the polls like “arrows to the enemies’ chest.”

They went to vote despite al-Qaida threatening “God’s wrath and mujahideen’s weapons.”

With deadly threats and the confusion of 6,200 candidates seeking 325 seats in parliament, preliminary estimates show more than 70 percent of Iraqi voters cast their ballots.

From the comfort of our safe and secure homes in America, only 64 percent bothered to take part in electing our president, senators and congressmen.

It’s a shame more Americans don’t vote.

Some sit back with the lame sarcastic excuse of asking, “what’s the point?”

Every vote counts. Don’t like either party? Vote for an independent. It’s your right to do so.

Maybe the point was best said by Walid Abid, who spoke to the Associated Press while several mortar rounds landed several hundred yards from his home in his neighborhood of Azamiyah in northern Baghdad.

“I am not scared and I am not going to stay put at home,” said Abid. “Until when? We need to change things. If I stay home and not come to vote, (my neighborhood) will get worse.”

This is only the second election ever held in Iraq and they are willing to face deadly violence and threats just to vote. Their purple thumbs are their proud sign of taking part.

We can learn from Iraqis.

Bill Stevenson is the Columbia Basin Herald managing editor. He was happy to vote during American elections even while living in Japan.