The Unity Group is issuing an urgent appeal to the community concerning the upcoming November presidential election. There is less than a week left to register for the upcoming election.
You may verify your voter information through visiting the Secretary of State's website online, or through contacting the Hamilton County Election Commission.
It is important to have accurate knowledge of voting status prior to going to the polls because this might have been altered following the last redistricting process. In some cases, precincts and polling places may have been merged or closed altogether. Many may have been purged from the polls.
Less than 15 percent of registered voters participated in the last election in August, a woefully low turnout compared to the number of eligible voters. We should caution all of us to remember, there is great truth in an old political adage, that all politics is local.
We vote for the state representatives; the sheriffs, judges and district attorneys; the council persons and school board members; the mayors and the governor.
These are the public officials who directly impact and influence our lives on a daily basis, from the courthouse to the school house. Lack of participation equates to lack of influence of public officials who affect your vestige interest.
A message that has greatly resonated with us during this election season hails from YelloPain, the Ohio based rapper who has lent his voice and platform to advocate for us all, especially younger voters and millennials, to exercise their right to vote in order to influence progress and change in their respective communities.
A few of the lyrics of his much heralded song, My Vote Don't Count, espouses:
Every time you stay one someone is making a decision about you
Making decisions about the air you breath, the water you drink, the food your kids eat, and how much money you bring home very twice weeks.
So every time you sit out an election, every time you don’t show up because you think it doesn’t matter, someone else is happy that you didn’t show up. So they can make that decision for you. Vote!”
As the late U.S. Congressman and Civil Rights icon John Lewis, who was brutally assaulted marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday for the sake of voting rights often said to us, “The vote is precious. It is almost sacred. It is the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democracy.”
We urge all who are able, to register and vote during the upcoming election season in what very well may turn out to be the most consequential election of our time.
Eric Atkins
Unity Group of Chattanooga