For decades I have written about the significance of voting.
I have tried everything possible and hoped that someone would be moved by my words.
Here are messages that may resonate with some readers who will get up, get to the polls, and do their civic duty. Some might even say that you have a moral obligation to vote. Preaching, begging, threatening, and explaining, are just a few of the tactics used previously. I know that I can’t give up. I have to keep coming up with ways to creatively express the importance of elections.
Maybe, just maybe, some of the messages below will prick the con-science of anyone hesitant about voting.
“First-time voters have the powerful opportunity to help determine the outcome of the upcoming presidential election alongside the down-ballot!”
ADVERTISEMENT— Yara Shahidi
—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Voting is the foundation stone of political action.”
“When it comes to our democracy, and who we determine to have the right to vote–our most sacred of rights–patience is no virtue. We must never be patient when someone else’s rights are in the balance. We cannot wait on laws, or elected officials, or anyone else. The only virtue when it comes to the right to vote is impatience.”
—Karine Jean-Pierre Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
“Of course voting is useful. But then again, I don’t put a big glow to it. Voting is about as essential as washing yourself. It’s something you’re supposed to do. Now, you can’t go around bragging, expecting to get props because you voted. That’s stupid. You don’t see people running around trying to get props because they washed up. ‘I washed today! I took a shower today!’
“But if you don’t vote, you can’t go around if something goes wrong saying, ‘Aw man, stuff just stinks!’ Well yeah, something stinks because you ain’t smelled yourself. You supposed to take a shower, dude, or you gon’ stink! The hip-hop nation is supposed to vote, because if they don’t, something’s gonna stink.”
—Chuck D of Public Enemy
“What would it profit a man to gain the vote and not be able to control it?”
ADVERTISEMENT— Courtland Cox Lowndes County SNCC
“I am one of the students who was attending Tuskegee Institute and working at White Hall Baptist in 1966. The KKK used to chase us every night when we would be dismissed. I am now a mother and a grandmother who will not allow my children to attend school on their Bday until they register to ‘VOTE.’” (Edited)
— Elizabeth S. Jackson
“The Africans require, want, the franchise on the basis of one man one vote. They want political independence.”
— President Nelson Mandela
“Every voice is equally powerful. Don’t underestimate your vote. Voting is the great equalizer.”
— Dr. Maya Angelou
“Voting is the only way to ensure that our values and priorities are represented in the halls of power,” Obama said. “And it’s not enough to just vote for president every four years. We all have to vote in every single election.”
— First Lady Michelle Obama
“The power is in the people and politics we address.”
ADVERTISEMENT— Tupac Shakur
“Listen up hotties! Y’all need to go vote this year, and y’all need to go tell y’all friends to vote too. And the first step to voting is registering, okay? So get up, go register.”
— Megan Thee Stallion
“First-time voters have the powerful opportunity to help determine the outcome of the upcoming presidential election alongside the down-ballot!
— Yara Shahidi
