Below is a great article that I recently read concerning our right and duty to vote...

"On the first Tuesday in November, "some citizens of the U.S. republic will exercise their duty to vote by electing representatives in whom the public trust will be placed. In our form of government, elections are more than an exercise of casting ballots.

Constitutionally, the major objective of voting is to control the government and its ability to infringe our liberty and rights. Voting in our republic is both a duty and a right. The right is that of participation in the republic, and the duty is to be an informed elector and citizen who actually votes.

A duty to be informed arises with the principle that a republic requires well-educated citizens to preserve its liberty, a fact well-known to our Founding Fathers. They intended education to come from sound teaching of basic education subjects, which they deemed to include the precepts of our Christian religion for moral and virtue guidance.

According to the Founders, education in America had the express purpose to prepare the people as good citizens, who are capable of participating in the republic and capable of their own critical thinking. Thomas Jefferson warned us by saying, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” (Ford, “Writings of Thomas Jefferson,” 10:4)

Citizens must ably examine those who strive for public office and understand public issues. Our Founders stressed the importance of citizens weighing character, integrity, virtue and morals on the scale of Christian ethics. Next to that, the Founders placed a premium on the ability to reason on public issues of the day. Combining these two requirements (Christian ethics and issues), the ultimate goal of an educated/informed citizen is to select office holders who are capable of handling the public trust, dealing with public issues and conducting government according to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and laws of the United States. Our Founders knew that “We the People” required education in order to select office holders who would protect our liberty and freedom.

As Americans, we have a sacred right and personal duty to vote for candidates who will best protect and defend the Constitution. “We the People” are the last line of defense for liberty. Our duty is to inform ourselves on the issues and the candidates, then to exercise our right and cast our votes for representatives who will hold the public trust sacred and preserve the Constitution. To knowingly vote for someone who refused to protect and defend the Constitution and the republic was, to our Founders, a treasonous act. It should be no less for us today.

Voting is the citizen’s ultimate check and balance under the Constitution, and every person who qualifies to vote, not only should vote, but MUST vote for the protection of liberty. To be eligible to vote, yet fail to vote, reduces our free republic (for which many have fought and died) to a mere political process that can be manipulated by narrow vote margins; allowing non-voting citizens to render the rest of us subject to the will of a few. These non-voters feel they possess a right not to vote and are totally oblivious to their more important, yet corresponding, duty to vote. By not voting, they deserve neither their vote nor their freedom. Sadly for America, these non-voters diminish liberty for all."

DON M. POWERS, is an attorney who teaches U.S. Constitution classes

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)