As a child in Africa, the idea of voting--not the concept of voting as a valued, cherished right--the very idea of voting was alien to me. I was born in Ghana and I grew up in Nigeria and I just was not brought up with the idea that you could pick your leaders by voting for them.
My African days and nights were ruled by the certainty that the government you went to bed with could be gone by dawn, often violently. Ghana had its first military coup in 1966, when I was four years old. Nigeria, too, had its first one that year. By the time I arrived in there, it was in the throes of the Biafran civil war. Nigeria, especially, became a nation of often violent government changes.
I bring up this history now because I just completed--with colleagues here at the American Civil Liberties Union--work on Voter Empowerment Cards for 40 states to educate people on voting in the November 4 election.
In fact, in my adult pursuits and endeavors, I have always been engaged in monitoring people exercising (or choosing not to exercise) their voting rights, most of that time as a journalist.
I first became aware of how important the franchise was in the early 1980s when Harold Washington was elected Chicago's first black mayor. I had arrived in Chicago in 1979 and it was to be my home for many years. The city's black population knew to expect very little in the way of city services. Many of the stresses of urban life, especially violent crime and extreme poverty took root in black neighborhoods and would not let go.