Ransom Notes: It’s time to vote

Now that the last “debate” is done, and America has seen the best and worst of the major party presidential tickets, there is only one thing left to do. Vote. It might seem simple. You go to your friendly neighborhood polling place, cast your

Now that the last “debate” is done, and America has seen the best and worst of the major party presidential tickets, there is only one thing left to do. Vote.

It might seem simple. You go to your friendly neighborhood polling place, cast your ballot, and sit back and wait for your vote to count.

But it hasn’t been that simple lately.

After 2000, no one can count on their vote anymore. After the 2000 presidential election, when the vote in Florida was hijacked by Republican operatives and ended up being decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, voters realized that their votes might not matter. That election, which ushered in the Bush years, introduced the American public to the word “chad.” It also introduced the term, “voter fraud.”

After 2004, when John Kerry was bested by George Bush in Ohio, with then-Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell disenfranchising many voters, no one could take their vote for granted. Blackwell, who is now a conservative rabble-rousing columnist (who suggested in his column that Barack Obama is the anti-Christ), caused many voters to be turned away and other votes to be discarded.

All of the signs point to even more widespread voting irregularities this Nov. 4. This is a sea-change election, or, as Gen. Colin Powell termed it, “transformational.” Republicans are pulling out all of the stops, trying to hold on to states that are tinted red. They want to make sure that those states don’t drift into the blue fold, and Obama is leading in too many of those states. Their candidate can’t hold on to those states, so Republicans are prepared to simply suppress Democratic votes by any means necessary. Some of it may even be legal, thanks to laws passed that seem to make it more difficult to vote rather than make it easier.

My father didn’t give me a whole lot of advice, but he told me that in this society, I had to be twice as good because I’m Black. I don’t know if Barack Obama’s Kenyan father imparted that nugget of wisdom to him, but it is applicable. Though the polls say that Obama may be on his way to a double-digit win, Obama knows that he can’t take a victory for granted. If he has a 10-point lead, he wants a 20-point lead because he knows that sometimes 10 points are not enough. He has heard of the Bradley effect (where former Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley was way ahead in the polls, yet lost the California gubernatorial election because his perceived white support evaporated on election day.)

Obama is much more sure of his white support, and his Black support might approach 97 or 98 percent.

Obama has dispatched his workers and his lawyers to those contested states to make sure that no one messes with the vote. He raised enough money to pay those people to fight the efforts of those who seek to disenfranchise voters. But Republicans are not being deterred. They have tasted success with these tactics, and nothing breeds imitation like success. There were already efforts in northern Indiana to try to stop early voting, but a court allowed the voting.

It may still not be enough. Voter registration drives in the states have been wildly successful, and even if ACORN allegedly registered Mickey Mouse, Daffy Duck or half of my deceased relatives, there should be enough legitimate votes to put Obama over the top.

But, again, no one should take any of this for granted. After 400 years, Black people have seen any number of shenanigans that have stripped them of their humanity, barred them from education, refused their vote and had their lives taken. Stealing the vote is par for the course. But forewarned is forearmed, and with the examples of 2000 and 2004, no one should expect that Nov. 4 will be without incident.

Two weeks left, and record early voting shows that the electorate is fired up and they want to make their voices heard. The voters have bought into the notion of this being a transformational election, and they want to take part.

It is time to vote, the only way that we have in this society to really make a change. It may seem sometimes that our vote doesn’t count and that we have flunked out of the Electoral College, but we have an opportunity on Nov. 4 to erase the idea of Red states and Blue states and just have United States.

Lou Ransom is executive editor of the Chicago Defender. He can be reached via email at [email protected].