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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

That annoying ballot is precious


Afghan women wait for their turn last month to sign up for the country's first free elections at a mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan. 
 (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
The Spokesman-Review

In an Associated Press photo taken this summer, Afghan soldiers sit in rows in a crowded hall at the Kabul Military Training Center. There are hundreds of them crammed together with nothing to do.

They look resigned to wait and wait some more, because they are waiting for the privilege to register to vote in the Afghan presidential elections scheduled for Oct. 9.

These soldiers fought for the right to vote in a country struggling on its journey toward democracy. And so these soldiers have perspective. They can be patient, very patient, as if waiting to be handed a precious diamond.

And they probably don’t mind the paperwork, because paperwork is the means by which you register to vote, a rare privilege. And one that others died to obtain.

The Afghan people have been registering to vote in record numbers throughout the summer. Some estimates say 91 percent of the population has signed up and 41 percent of those registered are women. These are the some of the same women who risked being stoned just a few years ago for showing their legs in public. Now the Taliban is out of power, and these women will vote for the first time in an election that is free as it gets in Afghanistan.

The Canadian Centre for Public Opinion and Democracy has chronicled the hostility and violence by rebels directed toward election workers and others involved in voter registration. Several people have been killed. On July 28, for instance, two people died when a bomb exploded in a voting registration site in Afghanistan’s Andar district.

On Tuesday, Washington state folks will vote in a new kind of primary. They will either vote by party affiliation or vote a nonpartisan ballot. In Spokane County, voters who go to the polls will receive four ballots — Democrat, Republican, Libertarian and nonpartisan.

Voters must choose only one ballot to fill out and discard the others. Those who have already voted by absentee ballot realize how simple it is to vote this way, despite how complicated it might sound.

The blanket primary, in which any voter could pick candidates from all parties, was a treasured tradition in the state for 69 years. But it’s dead and gone, declared unconstitutional.

Those people still steaming over the change and complaining about the added paperwork might calm down by thinking of the Afghan people who have waited for hours in town squares and sweaty meeting halls all summer.

And if Afghanistan seems too far away, too remote, those tempted to complain might remember some voting rights history in the United States. Remember the suffragists who were mocked, shunned, jailed and abused in their 70-year battle for the right of women to vote, finally granted to all women in 1920.

Or, if they’d like more recent history, they can read accounts of Freedom Summer, the 1964 voter registration project in Mississippi that took place at the height of the civil rights movement. Three of the young people working to register voters were beaten to death. Many of the others were abused, verbally and physically.

This might help put things in perspective as Tuesday dawns and some registered voters feel too tired, too busy or too angry over the new primary system to cast a ballot, either in person or by mail.

Heroic voter registration efforts, gathered from history past and present, remind all of us how precious the right to vote remains. Elections can be won or lost on the strength of just a few votes.

In solidarity with those who waited in voter-registration lines for hours in Afghanistan, and in honor of those who sacrificed here for the privilege of voting, make your voice heard in Tuesday’s primary election.