My freshman year of college, I took the class Africa: An Introductory Survey. In one specific lecture, a guest professor from UW-Madison began talking about his field experience in Zimbabwe and how the dictatorial regime within the country ran the voting process there. However, instead of what we know familiarly as the practice that occurs every four years in the United States, in Zimbabwe, the dictator's militant mercenaries would ride into towns, calling everyone into a public place. Everyone was then required to raise their hands if they were still in favor"" of the torrential ruler. Sadly, the majority of the people never got the freedom to truly voice their opinion as those whose hands were not raised were mutilated, tortured or never heard from again.
In America we are blessed, privileged and honored with freedom of opinion. We are starkly different than Zimbabwe and numerous other countries in the world when it comes to this, mostly because voting is our civic duty and a protected right. We are so fortunate to have no threat of danger, fear of retribution or feeling of terror caused by the process of choice.
This election day has brought everyone to the bottom page of a ""Choose Your Own Adventure"" book. You can make the monotonous choice of knowing and accepting the same, predictable ending through deciding to ignore this as something completely unrelated to yourself. Or, you can choose the less expected plotline and use the example above as a strong reason to do the opposite of inaction.
This election is important for so many reasons. Some may foster personally relevant grounds for their vote, like students with family in Iraq or those seeing their college funds diminish due to the economic crisis. Some may be looking to the future and wonder what kind of air they'll be breathing, climate they'll be experiencing or what types of energy the world will be using. Others' motivations may lie with their favoritism or strong dislike of a certain candidate; whether they are based on issues, how the campaigns were run or character, I am not here to judge the reasoning behind it. I am only here to emphasize and strongly encourage the importance of voting.
In Zimbabwe, people don't have the ability to express themselves. So why is it so hard for us as U.S. citizens to appreciate and utilize the freedoms we do have? People use the excuses of apathy, of ""my vote doesn't matter,"" or ""I don't have the time,"" but truthfully, you and I know there will never be a time when that is acceptable. In the 2000 election, students voted at a rate of about 32 percent. Approximately 68 percent of the student population relied on some type of excuse to prevent them from voting. This election, there are no pretexts: I'll take your apology from 2000 on Nov. 4. See you at the polls!
Caity Sherer is a sophomore majoring in African studies and communication arts. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
