Kathryn Ross: It has never been easier to vote, so do your duty this election season
Contrary to some popular rhetoric, it has never been easier to vote in the United States than it is today.
Election Day, Nov. 7 is just a few days away. Voting is the one duty American citizens over the age of 18 who have registered to vote, should do this Tuesday, if they haven’t already. The polls for the 2023 election have been open since Oct. 28 for early voting. They will remain open through Sunday until 5 p.m.
In Steuben County, early voting sites are located at the Hornell Arts Center, 56 Broadway; the South East Steuben County Library, 300 Civic Center Plaza, Corning; and the Steuben County office building annex, 20 E. Morris St., Bath.
In Allegany County you can cast your ballot early at the Board of Elections in Belmont, or if you reside in or around Wellsville you can vote at the village hall on Main Street. You’ll notice voting signs on the curb in front of the building on Main Street near Pizza King, so it is easy to find.
More: What to know about voting in Allegany, Steuben counties
Americans cherish their right to criticize our government and our elected representatives. However, it is my firm belief that if you don’t exercise your right to vote, then you have absolutely no right to criticize. You have to pay the piper to earn that right, because it shows that you have some skin in the game, that you have something to win or lose, that you have a stake in the outcome.
It absolutely drives me crazy when couples say they didn’t vote because their ballots would have just canceled each other’s out. What about the hundreds of thousands of voters that agreed with you and voted the way you would have voted if you weren’t too lazy to pull your bum out of the easy chair and get yourself to a poll.
As I said, it has never been easier to vote in this country than it is now in the year 2023. When the Constitution was ratified in 1789, it gave the states the right to decide voting requirements, and at that time one of the requirements in most every state was that a voter had to own property and/or show a net worth of a particular amount in order to qualify to vote. Free black men who owned property had the right to vote in many cases. That property ownership qualification disenfranchised many men who did not own property. Throughout the early part of the 19th century the property requirement was done away with in most states.
But there were still restrictions for women, and for indigenous people according to the “Milestones in Voting History/Voting Rights and Citizenship” publication. Four of the 15 post-Civil War Constitutional amendments were ratified to extend voting rights to different groups of citizens. The extensions state that voting rights cannot be denied or abridged based on the following:
Race, color, religion or previous condition of servitude (15th Amendment, 1870)
Sex (19th Amendment, 1920)
Failure to pay any poll tax or other tax for federal elections (24th Amendment, 1964)
Age for persons who are 18 years of age or older (26th Amendment, 1971)
I’m justifiably proud of the 26th Amendment, because in my mind I helped to get it passed by protesting and marching in the 1960s. Of course, by the time it was passed and went into effect, it didn’t do me much good because I turned 21, three months before that year’s election day. Nonetheless I count it has a milestone in my life’s accomplishments.
I’m also proud that the Seneca Falls Convention took place in this state in 1848. Of the 300 present, 68 women and 32 men signed the Declaration of Sentiments which defined the women's rights movement and demanded that women have the right to vote.
I think not only of the women who traveled those dusty, crude roadways by horse and buggy to get to the Convention on that summer day, but also of those who went on to suffer the slings and arrows, spit and rocks and slurs of their fellow man, chained themselves to the gates of the White House, were beaten, incarcerated, starved and force fed in the battle for the vote.
My heart swells when the Rochester news shows the grave of suffragette Susan B. Anthony in Mt. Hope Cemetery near the U of R, covered with “I Voted” stickers on Election Day.
Yes, today, it is much easier to exercise our right to vote, and easier than ever to physically cast it. So get out and vote.
— Kathryn Ross writes a weekly column.
This article originally appeared on The Evening Tribune: Ross: Exercise your right to vote. It has never been easier
