Every Vote Matters

Maybe American democracy needed a wake up call. Perhaps this current scourge of rampant disinformation, bitter partisan tribalism, and unlimited financial influence was something that the country needed in order to refocus its policy priorities. 

Maybe a rollback of the progressive reforms from the New Deal and Civil Rights eras will be a blessing in disguise. Maybe when workers lose their rights, when retirees are penniless, when businesses and factories are permitted to operate without safety regulations, when open land is strip mined, when air and water pollution rise to mid-20th-Century levels, when voter suppression is the law of the land, when immigrants are forced to live in ghettos, when communities of color are openly oppressed, when women are injured in black market abortions, and when a generation of young men is drafted and shipped off to bleed in an unjust war, maybe that’s when the American electorate will realize that policy decisions cannot be left to chance or entrusted to the whims of the powerful and the connected. Maybe that’s when Americans will realize once again that every single vote matters.