Voting is a powerful affirmation of the fundamental promise of liberty and justice for all.

By Mark Ritchie
Chapter from upcoming book on voting (Declare Yourself, to be published by Harper Collins)

When I graduated from high school in 1968, I was not old enough to vote. The voting age was twenty-one; I was only sixteen. It was a tumultuous time in our country’s history. In Southeast Asia, we were bogged down in a war with no clear victory in sight. At home, we witnessed struggles for civil rights, leaders being killed in the prime of life, and the evils of segregation and Jim Crow. At the same time, Rachel Carson’s seminal work, Silent Spring, raised awareness of the dangers of chemical and pesticide use, sparking a global environmental movement. Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy traveled the country, reawakening the collective conscience of our nation and bringing the issue of extreme poverty out of the shadows. Unfortunately, he was murdered the summer following my graduation.

Millions of young people in 1968 threw themselves into one or more of the social movements that characterized the decade. Petitions circulated on street corners everywhere, urging citizens to act on everything from ending discrimination against working women to ending the military draft. Young people marched in the streets across America protesting civil rights violations while others demanded justice for farm workers who planted and harvested much of our nation’s food. One of the most dramatic scenes of social change was playing out in the American South in the 1960s.

The voting rights movement was stirring and gathering into a giant force. Although I was raised in a small town in Iowa, I had a special interest in the civil rights struggle. I was born in the Deep South and spent many of my early summers living with my grandparents in Georgia. My grandparents farmed a tiny piece of land and supplemented their income by producing and repairing mattresses in a barn behind their farmhouse. Even as a child, one could not escape the reality of racial conflicts that embedded everyday life in the South. I rode with my grandfather as he picked up and delivered mattresses to many living in shantytowns. Images of the extreme poverty, especially on the faces of children, are forever seared in my memory.

As a young man, I grew increasingly active in civic engagement and politics. I joined in a national movement demanding the right to vote for eighteen-year-olds. There were many nineteen- and twenty-year-old soldiers sacrificing their lives in Vietnam, and none of them could vote. We believed that if we were old enough to be drafted and sent off to war, we were old enough to vote and have an equal voice in determining our future. In July 1971, eighteen-year-olds won the right to vote with the ratification of the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It was a great victory, but we then needed to work harder to ensure that young adults actually exercised that right to vote.

In the early 1980s, I became active in a movement to save family farms and rural communities. The challenges facing Greater Minnesota had quickly ballooned into an economic disaster; reports of foreclosures and suicides in Minnesota became national news. During this important—yet challenging—time I had the opportunity to work closely with a political science professor from Carleton College named Paul Wellstone. A charismatic, natural leader, Paul Wellstone inspired a dedicated following of students and activists eager to help transform and improve our communities. Paul understood fully that in order to direct a new course in rural Minnesota, we needed to change state and federal laws that were devastating rural communities, including disastrous trade policies, predatory lending practices, and government-set low prices. Paul also recognized that if we were going to change these policies, we needed to change the policymakers.

Paul Wellstone was a strong believer in the need for voter registration and “Get Out the Vote” drives. He taught me that every voice—and vote—mattered and that everyone should be included in the political process. He encouraged civic activists to move beyond issue-specific organizing and to consider running for elected office. I remember late-night conversations where he strongly made this case to me.

In 1990, Paul Wellstone shocked the political establishment by winning a seat in the U.S. Senate, defeating an entrenched incumbent that outspent him 10 to 1. Paul’s success was a source of pure joy for so many people. But his accomplishment was also a lesson. He was able to run a political campaign true to his values and win. If someone that honest, caring, and committed could get elected, others were encouraged to do the same. I was proud of Paul, happy to have been part of the movement that elected him, and eager to work with him on moving Minnesota and our country ahead. On October 25, 2002, while preparing for a speech in Kentucky, related to the importance of family farms and rural communities, I learned of the tragic plane crash that took the lives of Paul; his wife, Sheila; his daughter; as well as staff. I had lost a dear friend.

Paul’s death was a true turning point in my life. I began asking myself seriously where I was headed in my life and what else I needed to be doing to make a difference in this world. Recalling those late-night talks with Paul, I decided to take a leave of absence from my work as president of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a nonprofit think tank that I had led for twenty years, to work on a massive voter registration campaign called NOVEMBER 2. It was a huge success. More than two thousand groups helped register five million people, making it was one of the largest nonpartisan voter mobilizations in our nation’s history. I even got a chance to be on The Daily Show on election night in 2004.

But this was only the beginning of the process for me. While I was happy with the success of our work on the NOVEMBER 2 campaign, I became increasingly concerned about the integrity of elections. Inspired by my friend and mentor, I filed to run for secretary of state in Minnesota, a position responsible for overseeing elections in the state. On November 7, 2006, I was elected.

As I have grown older, I have come to understand how our actions can effect real change. I believe strongly that it is so important that we vote in every election. It is not only our right but also our chance to have our voices heard in how we want to be governed and what we want our future to be. Electoral politics is not perfection; it is about bending the arc of history toward justice, as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called on us to do. Sitting idly by, criticizing the news of the day, will get us nowhere. Voting is a powerful affirmation of the fundamental promise of liberty and justice for all.