Tuesday is the primary election in our Commonwealth.
There are many offices that are on the ballot, and we have the opportunity to decide the candidates who will square off in November.
In 2015, 12.1% of Daviess County’s registered voters voted in the primary. So, only one in 10 of registered voters in our community decided who would be on our last gubernatorial ballot.
This is unacceptable. Free elections are a bedrock tenet of protecting the values and beliefs that bore our nation. When a majority of us simply cede what we as Americans believe is a fundamental right, we are choosing to turn our backs on the generations before us — and the veterans and families in our midst — who have sacrificed so that we can freely go to our polling place in our neighborhood, sign in, go into a booth free from coercion and fear, and decide who will represent us.
If you feel complacent, disillusioned or simply lazy and don’t feel like making a short trip to your voting place, think of those who enlisted or who answered the call to step up and serve so that we could stay free or so others could vote in free elections — or those who marched and sat in jail cells to expand voting rights and access to all of our citizens.
These men and women fought and died for this right because, at the core, they believed that voting was a fundamental act of freedom. They were right.