I can't wait to vote today. Each time I vote, it's as exciting as it was the very first time I voted in 1976. To vote is to feel power, control over an outcome, to state "this is what I want for my future, my family's future and that of my country." There's nothing else like it. It's about having rights.
When my daughter was born in 1993, I collected newspapers and other articles about our government at that time and about our president, who I saw as the champion of rights she was entitled to on the day she was born a female citizen of our United States. I wanted her to know of her birth rights in case they did not exist eighteen years later when she would reach voting age. In our next election, in 2012, it will be her turn, and she'll have to decide what's worth fighting for and make her voice count.
Today, my children and I will go to the voting booth together. We will stand in line along with our neighbors, friends, strangers, professors, farmers, inventors, laborers, truck drivers, bus drivers, writers, artists, doctors, dentists, teachers, preachers, homemakers, students, salesclerks, the young, the old, and all those in between and we will share the only thing that unites all of us equally: the right to vote.