What if this is the last election in U.S. history?

What if this were the last time you ever had a chance to vote? If your children and grandchildren and future generations were to look back on November 2020 as the end of free elections in the United States, would you fail to pick up a ballot this year?

There are those who say it doesn’t matter who you vote for, both political parties are corrupt, their candidates are unworthy and the election process itself is a sham.

That’s a bunch of garbage!

For decades there have been people, entire organizations, working to discourage the American people from voting. It is a political strategy called suppressing the vote, so the power elite can control the outcome and silence the working stiffs.

Should you choose to stay home don’t tell me you didn’t take sides, because you absolutely did.

You chose the side that is trying to destroy our democracy. You chose the side that favors political repression. You chose the side that wants to silence those who would use their voice to defend the defenseless.

Centuries ago, people came here because kings and queens, czars and emperors decided how people would live and how they would die.

Most people were not paid for their work. If they killed a deer to feed their families, they were executed. When there was a war, they were rounded up, handed a spear or a pitchfork and told to go to die for their beloved monarch. This went on for centuries.

People eventually left such places to come to America. They risked their lives on tiny ships trying to reach a hostile country that offered nothing but hope. And once they were here, they created a new kind of government where people had the right to vote for their leaders.

Slaves came here in ships as well. They did not choose to make the voyage. They were placed in chains, sold like cattle and made to work for people who would become rich off their blood, sweat and tears. They were beaten, whipped and lynched for trying to run away.

They dreamed of a better life. Of freedom. One day they were granted that right and tried to exercise it at the election polls.

Black people were burned alive in churches just for holding meetings where they talked about voting. They were shot on the streets walking to the polls. They were lynched from trees because they dared to run for office.

Still, they tried to vote. Still they fought for the right to cast a ballot. And you dare wonder today why you should bother to vote.

There are women who took their small children and walked in the streets campaigning for the right to vote. They worked 18 hours a day in sweatshops, came home and were forced to turn over their money to husbands who beat them and spent their savings at local bars.

They had almost no rights. They couldn’t even own their own homes in some places. But they realized at the ballot box, if they had the vote, they might be able to change that for all women in the future.

They were verbally and physically abused and sent to prison. Some died trying to make the dream of universal suffrage a reality. All so you could vote.

Yet, today there are some women who don’t care to vote. It is their right, they say.

The fate of our country is at stake this November. There are those who may try to stop the election, or at the very least stop you from casting a ballot. You must take a stand and tell your friends and neighbors in other states to do the same.

We vote for all of those who have suffered and died for this right. We vote to preserve this legacy for future generations. We vote to protect the most powerful revolutionary tool in the history of the world: The election ballot.