Vote or die!

This is the saber-rattling threat cried out by Citizen Change founder Sean “P. Diddy” Combs. But that doesn’t seem to follow our country’s code of freedom first. Young people should vote because they want to, not because some star tells them to.

Every time I turn around, someone is telling me how important it is for every young American to cast his or her vote in November.

The Citizen Change Web site proclaims that this election “truly has become a matter of life or death. The ‘forgotten ones’ will not be able to survive if the current issues of unemployment, failing education and denial to proper health care continue to be ignored.”

It’s not that I don’t think these campaigns are commendable. I volunteer for one such organization myself. But people shouldn’t vote because P. Diddy will put the smack down on them or because a cavalcade of other celebrities think they should. Look past the glitz and slogans to remember the real struggle it took to get a vote in the first place.

A few generations back, African-Americans were facing Jim Crow laws, literacy tests and loopholes that reduced the number of black people eligible to vote to almost nothing. And that applied only to men. Women were not even considered intelligent enough to have a vote of their own.

African-Americans were given the right to vote in 1870, women in 1920. American Indians weren’t given a vote until 1960.

Look at the situation in Afghanistan. American soldiers have been giving their all to bring our idea of American freedom to them. There are groups that are willing to kill to prevent the voting process. What would the American reaction be if the people of Afghanistan just decided, hey, we don’t need to vote? Would we have put all this time and money and lives into trying to secure their voting rights for nothing?

People have fought so hard and some have even died to give us the right to vote. Educating ourselves and exercising that right is the best way to honor them. Having a vote is having a choice. We now have a say in how we are treated because we vote on laws and the people who lead us. Voting isn’t this cool, glitzy club to join. It is a privilege and a right.