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It seems like a life time ago, but I still remember the excitement of voting for the first time as a 21-year-old. 

I was a senior in college, a time when the government sent 18-year-olds to war, but wouldn’t let them vote on the people who sent them.

The Viet Nam War protesters were responsible for that being changed so everyone can now vote when they turn 18.  

My family were (and are) Democrats, but that is not why I voted. I voted because I was an American. I voted because I learned from my family that voting was an act of patriotism and a privilege I should never take for granted.

I can honestly say I never have.

There have been times when I didn’t like any of the candidates on the ballot, but I still voted because I wasn’t voting for some of them only.

I was voting for myself, and for all American voters.

That is what I believe about living in a democracy, that one person voting protects the right of all people to vote. Voting is a tangible expression of “we’re in this thing together.”

It’s never just about politicians running for office. It’s about us, the people who vote. It is what free people do to keep themselves free, and our founders knew it when they established this great experiment in self-government.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “We in America do not have a government by the majority – we have a government by the majority who participate.”

To have the government we have requires participation in it, and voting is the fundamental way of doing that. If we don’t, we put our own freedom at risk, as Jefferson went on to say, “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

The implications of his words are clear. Not to vote is to remain silent when the voice of the people needs to be heard. Even more, it risks losing the right to vote ever again for one’s self AND for everyone else.

I won’t pretend to understand people who don’t vote, but I do know that they don’t understand why they should in the first place. It’s not to win, though we want to, but everyone loses sometimes. It’s not to get our views turned into law, though everyone wants that as well, but it doesn’t always turn out that way.

No, we vote because it is both a privilege and a responsibility to carry the cause of freedom forward, to pass it to the next generation.

Every day we hear that the mid-term elections will decide the future of our democracy. I think that is exactly right.

The MAGA movement Donald Trump started that has taken over the Republican Party will use any whatever political power voters give them to abuse their oath of office, create chaos, and take more and more power from voters except their own, even if it involves violence.

MAGA Republicans don’t care about democracy. They care only about themselves. So, yes, voting against MAGA Republican candidates is a critical reason to vote on Tuesday.

But voting is more than that, much more.

President John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural address: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

Voting is the answer to that question. Not the only answer, but the one without which none of the others matter.