Last November, like many people, I waited for more than an hour in a line that wrapped around the building outside of McLaughlin Middle School to cast my vote. Granted, there was a tumultuous presidential election with a lot at stake.
Now we know exactly what was at stake—mainly, our civil rights and our democracy.
On Tuesday, my wife and I returned to McLaughlin for the first time since last November to vote in the municipal primaries—which Manchester Ink Link’s Andy Sylvia did yeoman’s work covering—and it was a ghost town.
We walked into the gymnasium, grabbed our ballots, dodged a piece of tumbleweed, and voted in less than five minutes. This begs the question: Where was everyone?
I get it. Voters don’t tend to come out for primaries, and the alderman races in many of Manchester’s wards were uncontested, but we were still voting to move forward the Aldermen-at-Large candidates, and if you live in Manchester, that matters.
For the time being, we still have a voice in free elections. In fact, our democracy asks very little of its citizens, only that we uphold the simple civic duty of voting for the people we want to represent us—as well as paying taxes, serving jury duty and, if you’re a male ages 18-25, registering for the draft. But that’s about it.
You don’t have to dig deep to know that politics on a national level have devolved into partisan bitch-fests, and unless one party controls all of the branches of government, as is currently the case, things in Washington, D.C., are usually in a perpetual stalemate.
This is aside from the fact that almost all of the politicians, in both parties, are bought and sold by billionaires and Super-Pacs in a quid pro quo where the politicians will, in turn, do the bidding for their corporate billionaire owners.
On the national level, the individual’s voice makes barely a peep.
But in local, municipal elections, where there aren’t political party affliations—although everyone knows who with whom the candidates affiliate—your voice actually matters.
And the candidates aren’t millionaires who shed their ties to have a cheeseburger at The Red Arrow and pretend that they’re plain folks, like you and me. The local candidates actually are plain folks. They’re your neighbors and coworkers and the people you see on Friday nights at Chelby’s Pizza. Many of them will actually listen to your concerns and represent your voice in the city where you live.
If anything, it is more important to vote in municipal elections, seeing the results will have more of a direct impact on your day-to-day lives.
One of my publishers gave me some advice back in 2002, when my first book was published, and that advice seems applicable here. When “Frostbite” was about to be released, he told me, “Don’t worry about being a famous writer in New York City. Instead, worry about your own backyard.”
This is our backyard, and we should all worry about Manchester first, which means showing up to vote. And if you don’t vote, please don’t complain.
And watch out for tumbleweed.
You can reach Nathan Graziano at ngrazio5@yahoo.com, who is not George Clooney.