By What the Hill?

VOTE!!

Apr 29, 2011 | 3:04 PM

The debate over the ability to vote online has me all worked up. How lazy have we become as a society that we can’t take the time or put in the effort to go out and exercise our ability to participate in democracy.

If our lives have become too busy to take 20 minutes to swing by a polling station, then it means we have been fortunate enough to never understand what hardship is … maybe individually we do, but not as a society.

There are people around the world who would give their lives for the very thing people in Canada ignore.

And they are giving up their lives. People in Libya are dying and so are protesters in Syria. They want the freedom to choose, to pick the people who will make the decisions that govern everyone’s lives.

I met a very well educated man in Southern Sudan, and by educated I mean through the best
universities in England and the United States, but he was unable to cast a vote until last year’s election.

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When he was finally, finally given the chance to vote the look of pride was unmistakeable, even as he
spoke about it months later. For once, he was able make a decision that would govern his future.

There are countries where photographs are taken and names are written down at opposition rallies, so mobs and death squads know who to target later.

Opposition leaders and their supporters in Zimbabwe, Burma and Egypt have been jailed, tortured,
beaten, killed or simply disappeared.

And in these countries, where raising your voice just to make it heard can mean losing your job, family
and future, is standing up and screaming.

They want something better, they want something more, they want equality and the right to decide.

We’ve never, not had that right and by continuing to exercise the right to vote it means we will never
lose it.

So, if you do one thing on Monday, please let it be vote.

I don’t care who you vote for or why you vote, just do it.

Don’t say there is a lack of quality candidates. That is not an excuse not to vote. You don’t like them? Then make your voice heard by leaving your ballot unmarked.

Don’t know who is running? Take five minutes and log onto voteNOW, click over to Elections Canada,
look at your local paper, ask your neighbour.

Make the decision that will not only govern your future, but the future of our country.

Like how Canada looks, say it, don’t like the direction our nation is taking, say it.

It just takes an X in a circle or no mark at all.

ahill@panow.com