On every Independence Day, America marks its history as being an enduring laboratory for democracy. The right to vote is always a part of the national legacy that citizens celebrate with fireworks and festivities.
This year, ironically, the power of the vote has been on display most vividly among the British, the very government the U.S. fought to gain its independence. The result of the Brits’ referendum, a decision to leave the European Union, sent shockwaves around the world.
There have been murmurings among some voters about a bit of buyers’ remorse. Driven to the ballot box by a desire to reassert what they considered diminished British sovereignty, many now acknowledge they didn’t realize the repercussions of that vote.
As the ripple effects continue to fan out, only one thing is clear now: Elections do, indeed, have consequences. Plainly, though many supporters of the “Leave” campaign are exultant, others had not thought out the ramifications.
In America’s current national election cycle, there’s a lot at stake. Advocates from all reaches of the polarized U.S. political landscape are realizing that a major consequence of the presidential vote will be control of the next appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court.
With the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, the characteristic 4-4 split between the liberal and conservative justices has meant outcomes that observers on either side found distressing.
Most recently, a narrow majority struck down a Texas law imposing restrictions on abortion clinics the court deemed unnecessary and in violation of constitutionally protected access to the procedure. And supporters of the Obama administration felt deeply chagrined that the court overturned the president’s executive action assigning a low priority to immigration enforcement on those brought here illegally as children.
Hawaii’s abysmally low voter turnout notwithstanding, citizens here also ought to cherish their own power in the voting booth.
In commentaries appearing in Sunday’s opinion pages, two voices from the American Civil Liberties Union underscored the importance of voting rights — and the fears that they are being eroded.
Mandy Finlay, advocacy coordinator for ACLU of Hawaii, pointed out the ease of access Hawaii has to its elected legislators, owing partly to the state’s small size and proximity of the government agencies to most of the population and to its intimate island culture.
“This access empowers us to play a vital role in shaping policy on the issues most important to us and our families,” she wrote, and correctly observed that several key positions will be filled this cycle.
This is a particularly crucial juncture at City Hall, with the rail project again hanging in the balance, just to name one example.
Voting is a right that is at once powerful and vulnerable. Joyce Lee, an intern with the civil liberties organization’s local chapter, described the other side of the coin.
An election looms in which a less potent federal Voting Rights Act is in place to protect access to the ballot, Lee noted. Three years ago, the nation’s high court allowed certain restrictions on voting that were passed at the state level, including requirements to show a photo ID to vote and curtailing the time allotted for early voting.
In Hawaii the access to the ballot has been kept wide open, with one exception that Lee noted: Those convicted of felonies can’t vote until they are released. It has a disproportionate effect on ethnic minorities, including Native Hawaiians, she wrote. It may be time to rethink whether this restriction serves a worthwhile purpose.
For those who can’t vote — and the headlines are filled with stories from around the globe about societies where people lack that freedom — the value of this democratic exercise is obvious. The rest of us often forget that voting is a privilege and a responsibility. The Fourth celebrations of 2016 serve to remind us of that.
