To Norah Vincent, Who Didn't Vote

The Los Angeles Times this morning ran an opinion piece by writer Norah Vincent titled, "A Vote Too Late for Obama," in which Vincent confesses that she didn't vote in last week's historic election because she didn't like Obama's tax proposals, found McCain "intellectually brittle" and Palin downright terrifying. But now she's having second thoughts.

"As I've watched the wave of post-election elation rushing over so many people in recent days," Vincent says, "and as I have been unexpectedly and powerfully moved myself, I've started to feel a little, I don't know, out of it."

A hundred and twelve people responded to Vincent's commentary, expressing just about every possible reaction from "You're an idiot" to "Don't worry, Obama will disappoint us all, and then you won't have to feel guilty." But still, I felt moved to toss in my two cents:

How sad, Norah. This past week has been a highlight of my life, a defining moment in U.S. and world history! I'm sorry you passed up the opportunity to be a part of it.

You're brave to share your thoughts and regrets with the public, though, and I hope you can ignore the cruelty in some of these comments. Strange stuff for such a hopeful, magnanimous time as this.

You've explained, quite eloquently, why you didn't vote. Which has inspired me to explain why I do. Why, in fact, I can't not vote.

Voting is such a rare and costly privilege. So few people anywhere, at any time, have ever had a say in who governed them or how. Yet we Americans do. And that's only because so many have sacrificed so much for so long.

When I think of all the soldiers killed or wounded in all the wars fought to establish and preserve this nation, and of all the heartbreak and hardship imposed on their families and communities back home, I can't not vote.

When I think of all the immigrants, including my own Lithuanian grandparents, who left behind forever everything and everyone they knew and loved, all to live in a new world where men were free to determine their own destinies, I can't not vote.

When I think of all the suffragettes who marched through jeering crowds and chained themselves to fences and staged hunger strikes and endured prison forcefeedings so that women, too, could help shape our society, I can't not vote.

When I think of all the African-Americans in my native South having to wait an entire century after Lincoln freed the slaves before their opinions finally counted, I can't not vote.

And when I think of boys just a few years older than I, drafted at age 18, forced to fight, even to die in Vietnam, but not considered old enough to help elect or reject those who sent them there, I can't not vote.

Even when the weather's bad or the lines are long, even when the issues don't seem all that important, or I can't get excited about any of the candidates--even then, I can't not vote. I just can't.

This time of course was different. This time made up for every boring, disappointing election I've ever voted in. This time we made all those sacrifices count for something. I wish you could know how good that feels.