Your Birthday Present for America

Your Birthday Present for America
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

Happy Birthday, America!

We are, indeed, a great country... and we could be even better if

[91.6 Million (41.3 percent), 2012126.8 Million (58.3 percent), 201080.7 Million (37.8 percent), 2008121.9 Million (58.7 percent), 200679.9 Million (39.3%) 2004, and118.0 Million (59.5 percent) 2002]

of our fellow American citizens, who were eligible to vote in those years, DID, in fact, exercise their right and obligation to participate in our national community and had, indeed, voted.

An active national community where everyone participates -- where everyone learns about the challenges we face and everyone takes some degree of ownership in the people who represent us in solving those challenges, is essential to a vibrant and thriving Democracy.

And midterm elections are, in many ways AS IMPORTANT as presidential elections because it is the composition of Congress that will either support the president we voted for the two years before or... as we have seen... create gridlock and thwart the policies, philosophies and vision of that president, of either party. And the composition of the United States Senate, after EVERY election, might be critical in confirming new members of The Supreme Court who might, themselves, be casting deciding votes that could affect our nation for 30 or more years.

It is embarrassing that, in such a great country, that 126.8 million chose not to participate in our democracy in 2010, 121.9 million chose not to participate in 2006 and 118 million American citizens chose not to participate in 2002. That's over 366 million non-voters in those three elections.

So, in addition to wearing red, white and blue, eating hot dogs, watching parades and fireworks, perhaps the MOST patriotic thing you could do on this July 4, the biggest birthday present you could give, would be to register and get your family members to register to vote today!

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot