Nov 4, 2013 3 min read

The right to vote has involved intense fights and is often taken for granted.

Women couldn’t vote in every state until the U.S. Constitution was amended in 1920.

Despite the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870, which said that no one could be denied a ballot on the basis of race, it took another century and the arrival of the Voting Rights Act before African Americans were fully accorded the freedom to cast a ballot in every state and the literacy tests and outright hostility that greeted them when they tried to reach the voting booth were swept away by force of law.

Then there are some lesser-known cases of voting rights being denied within our country: some states barred Catholics, Jews and Quakers from running for office or voting in the late 1700s, and it took until 1828 for Jews to get the right to vote in Maryland.

Similar indignities were doled out to religious minorities in European nations in the 18th and 19th centuries. Some countries limited voting to only those who owned property.

In the 21st century, the right to have a say in how one is governed still remains elusive in many places.

Some countries don’t have elections at all, while others have sham elections dominated by one person or party that end up rubber-stamping a preordained “winner.”

On these shores, there are efforts ongoing in many states, including Pennsylvania, to institute voter ID laws that place barriers in the way of citizens when they want to exercise their franchise. Although the claim from proponents is that voter ID laws prevent fraud, there is no evidence that fraud is widespread, or even occurring in isolated cases.

Instead, these are thinly veiled efforts by lawmakers to discourage voters who might be inclined to vote against them from showing up.

In Arizona and Kansas, state officials are trying to ratify laws that would require voters to provide proof of citizenship when they register, a mandate that has the same intent, and likely the same effect, as voter ID laws.

And, this past summer, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Legislators and jurists should be dedicated to making sure all citizens can participate in the democratic process; instead, many seem hellbent on putting a fence around it.

With these thoughts in mind, we encourage you to cast a ballot today.

Because this is an odd-numbered year, and there isn’t a presidential election or governor’s race atop the marquee, turnout is expected to be exceedingly low. How low? Look to 2009, when a school board member in the Avella district was elected by a single write-in vote.

But it needn’t be that way. Elected officials who determine millage rates, decide cases in common pleas court or the commonwealth’s Supreme Court, and make decisions on city and borough councils, can have as great an impact on our lives and wallets as President Obama or Gov. Corbett.

George Jean Nathan, the writer and critic who worked closely with H.L. Mencken, once noted that “bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.”

Of course, higher turnout would not mean that our politics would suddenly become more even-tempered and uncorrupted by the usual human frailties and vanities.

But a more engaged citizenry would certainly ensure greater accountability from our elected officials and a better quality of governance.