ELECTION DAY

Today is Election Day. This is not just another day for me, even though I already voted absentee weeks ago, as I have for decades, except in 2016, when I actually flew back to my native Ohio and went to my polling place in Cuyahoga County to cast my ballot. That was an act of faith for me, as it was for the majority of American voters who—by a margin of nearly three million—did not vote for the current occupant of the White House. And let me just say that, above and beyond the election outcome, what I’m seeing on this particular Second Tuesday, makes me feel the most optimistic that I have since 2016.

Perhaps the reason that Election Day is such a special day for me is because, as a young reporter and correspondent, back in the mid-1970s to early 1980s, I had the opportunity to live and work under a harsh military dictatorship, under which the ballot boxes had been locked up and the citizens of the country where I was living had no voice in the political and social process. Or at least, the only voice they had was the one they were willing to venture at risk to their physical freedom, their lives and the lives of their loved ones. During that time reporting on my base country and on surrounding countries where authoritarian regimes were also firmly ensconced, I came to truly appreciate the democratic system under which I had been reared, with all of its faults, but more significantly, with all of its virtues.

The lessons I learned through the risks I took in those years in order to report as accurately as possible the horrors and abuses that were taking place under that regime led me, in 1986, once democracy had been restored and I was managing editor of a newspaper, to accept a post that the US ambassador offered me on the Fulbright Scholarship Commission, a program designed to promote understanding through education between the US and other nations. I did so because I felt it was important to send a message of solidarity and friendship among democracies with the US providing an example of outreach to countries seeking to consolidate their only recently regained democratic status. I felt that the importance of this was rooted in the fact that the US was one of the world’s most successful democracies as well as the biggest.

Because of this unique learning experience of witnessing tyranny close up and personal, I’ve been particularly dismayed by what I’ve seen in the US over the past four years. This anxiety has been heightened not so much by a president who has shown utter disdain for the democratic process, civil rights and the rule of law, but by a hijacked ruling party that has let him get away with it and by a large sector of the population that has not only acquiesced to, but has enthusiastically embraced the president’s authoritarian designs and penchant for violent division.

Many people feel that I exaggerate when I refer to the rise of authoritarianism in the US, but I have seen this movie before and I know how it ends. If there is one lesson I have learned well it is that populist dictators don’t rise to absolute power in spite of their people but because of them. The road to authoritarianism is paved with rights abdicated by, not taken from the people. It is only after that authoritarian power has been consolidated that people lose their rights completely and the reality of autocratic rule becomes obvious. But by then, it is too late. Ask Russia. Ask Venezuela.

So why am I optimistic? Because for way too long now, I’ve noted how many of my compatriots give lip-service to American democracy, but without accepting responsibility for it. There is all too often an attitude of democracy’s being an inviolable institution that, once firmly established, takes care of itself. In my own very real experience, nothing could be further from the truth. Though to many it may sound corny and cliché, we the people must defend democracy daily, a defense which starts with the democratic principle that, while I may disapprove of what you say, I will defend to the death your right to say it. But also that when we see the ugly shadow of tyranny rearing its head, we have an obligation not to remain silent but to make our voices heard.

The most effective way of making one’s voice count in a democracy is by voting. In some democracies the vote is compulsory. In the US, where it is one of our greatest rights, but optional, people in recent years have been largely apathetic about exercising this sacred democratic right, with usually only about half of those eligible actually casting a ballot. Even in 2016, a highly contentious presidential election, only fifty-five percent of eligible Americans cast their vote, or about one hundred thirty-eight million voters.

My optimism flourished this morning, then, when I awoke to the news that, whether by mail-in, absentee or early-voting, a hundred million Americans had already cast their vote, smashing all election records. And news throughout the day today tends to show that actual in-person voting at the traditional polling stations is heavy.

Until the results are in, it’s impossible to know what that means in terms of which ticket will win the race. But what it indicates to me is that the vast majority of the people of the United States have been aroused from their political slumber over the past four years and, like never before in the recent history of the United States, have awakened to the fact that democracy doesn’t happen on its own. We make it happen. And if the current administration has done nothing else in favor of democracy, there is at least this—that the people are awake and, one way or another, taking responsibility for the destiny of the country.