Why I voted

With only two choices on my ballot — At-large and Ward 2 seats on the Sanford city council — I'm sure I would have been forgiven if I had just gone to the Dairy Bar for coffee before work instead of voting.
Let me back up for a second, though. Election day is the best day of the year to be a reporter. Not only can you come into work at noon, since you'll likely be up until 1 a.m. writing stories, but the air of excitement all day is palpable. Plus, you get free pizza! (although, this year, we are lobbying for Chinese food.) The highlight here at the Herald is always R.V. Hight storming through the newsroom with returns at around 8 p.m. It is a great but long night that I have looked forward to every year since working on the state and national desk at the Daily Tar Heel in college.
But this year, eh, well, the excitement level for a political junky like myself is somewhat subdued. There's no national, state or even countywide elections to create a buzz. So I would have been forgiven if I had opted to sleep in rather than voting.
But I didn't. Instead, I went to the Sanford Exchange Club, walked up and handed the pollworker my driver's license and waited. And waited. And waited, while she thumbed through the roll of names and didn't find a single "Owens, Jonathan Boyd" on them. She looked at me like I was a criminal, trying to sneak in to vote from Pittsboro or Carthage.
After the confusion settled, with a quick call to the Board of Elections, we figured out that I was at the wrong precinct. The only other time I have voted in Sanford, last year, I chose early voting since I figured I would be swamped all day in the newsroom. So I asked Gordon Anderson where we vote and he told me the Golf Course. He was wrong, and so was I.
I could have quit there, deemed the election of too little importance to drive across town to the Elk's Lodge, and simply went on in to work. But I didn't. I drove on down, picked up my ballot and voted. It took about a minute, and I felt like I had done my small part to make Sanford better.
After all of this, though, I was only the 148th person to cast a ballot at the Elk's Lodge in a precinct that must have at least 2,000 registered voters. That is sad.
So why did I go through all that trouble to vote, and why should do the same?
It's a topic that every newspaper editorializes each election day. I think we did it today. And it is always the same — if you don't vote, you can't complain. And while that is a good point, I can give you a better, more pragmatic reason.
Vote because, for most of us, it is the only power you have in this country or even this city. For one day a year, the poorest people in Sanford, if they have not been convicted of a felony and have registered, have the same amount of power in their hands as the prominent business owners, the school superintendents, the real estate developers, the newspaper publishers, the bank presidents, the mayor, the commissioners and councilmen.
Everyone likes to say that America is a government of the people — that government officials are mere representatives who serve at the pleasure of their constituents. But that is only true one day out of the two, four, or six years that they serve — and that day was today.
In truth, this country and even this town has a ruling class that for all the other days of the year make decisions based on both their vision for the future of their constituents' lives and their own self interests.
For one day, though, you get to tell them whether they are doing things right or not. So go vote, because today you rule this town.
I would suggest, though, that you read Chelsea's story in today's Herald first, so you are not driving all around town looking for your polling place. Obviously, I didn't.