Have you registered to vote for Election Day coming up on November 6? Today is National Voter Registration Day, a celebration of our democracy and the largest one-day effort to register voters. First observed in 2012, it’s held on the fourth Tuesday of September, a holiday endorsed by the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) and supported by the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED).
Organizers celebrating National Voter Registration Day have issued a site with a direct link here where you can register immediately “This will take 2 minutes,” the site states.
And don’t forget, if you’ve recently moved, gotten married and changed your name or turned 18, make sure to update your voter registration!
If you ever doubted the importance and power of the vote–no matter what side of the aisle you’re on--read the inspiring words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his “Give Us the Ballot,” address delivered at the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom:
“Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.
Give us the ballot, and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law; we will by the power of our vote write the law on the statute books of the South and bring an end to the dastardly acts of the hooded perpetrators of violence.
Give us the ballot, and we will transform the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.
Give us the ballot, and we will fill our legislative halls with men of goodwill and send to the sacred halls of Congress men who will not sign a ‘Southern Manifesto’ because of their devotion to the manifesto of justice.
Give us the ballot, and we will place judges on the benches of the South who will do justly and love mercy, and we will place at the head of the southern states governors who will, who have felt not only the tang of the human, but the glow of the Divine.
Give us the ballot, and we will quietly and nonviolently, without rancor or bitterness, implement the Supreme Court’s (Brown) decision of May seventeenth, 1954.”
If you have questions on voting or registering, call 866-OUR-VOTE for answers to common questions about registering to vote. Use the hashtags #NationalVoterRegistrationDay and #MidtermsOnMyTerms to connect with others who are celebrating the right to vote!
