From "50 ways to Love Your Country": Vote, no matter what.

[ambitious_wench]

"MoveOn's 50 ways to love your country"
page 22: Murray Hirsch, 79, Pembroke Pines, Florida

In 1996, I was in charge of the day-to-day operaions of the Clinton/Gore reelection campaign headquarters in Pembroke Pines, Florida. On a Saturday morning two weeks before the election, I opened the office at about 8:15. Volunteers were scheduled to arrive at 9:00.

The phone immediately rang. The person on the other end told me she was a hospice nurse. She was in the home of a man who had only days to live but who'd recieved his absentee ballot. He knew who he wanted to vote for, but he had questions about some of the complicated wording of the referenda.

He would not live long enough to know who won the presidency or what initiatives had passed, but he was concerned, on his deathbed, to be sure he voted intelligently for the betterment of his fellow citizens.

Here is a man whom I never met, whose name I did not know, and I don't know when he died, but he taught me something I will never forget: the importance of one man's vote.