The Shadow
The Curtis A. Smith Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1033 has announced the winners of its annual Voice of Democracy contest.
The contest was open to students in grades 9-12. This year’s theme was “Why My Vote Counts.”
The post received nine entries for the competition, and the winners were recognized at the annual Pearl Harbor Day Remembrance Ceremony in December.
The top three winners included Midajah Heighter, first place, $150; Hannah Jean Nester, second place, $100; and Alexis McGuire, third place, $50.
All three are students at Covington High School.
Heighter’s first place essay was submitted for district competition.
The top three essays are as follows:
Midajah Heighter – First Place
My vote matters because it shows how much the world has changed and how voting rights have changed for women since the 1800s.
History has changed substantially since the mid 1800s. In the 1840s Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton started the Women’s Suffrage Movement, which pioneered for women’s rights to vote.
Then two groups, NAWSA (National American Woman Suffrage Association) was led by Carrie Chapman Catt and the group campaigned and lobbied to pass a women’s suffrage Constitutional amendment and the NWP (National Women’s Party) was led by Alice Paul and would take radical action to aide the passage of the amendment.
Many men and women, who believed women should have the right to vote, had finally achieved their goal in 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment, enfranchising women, was finally ratified.
My vote matters because it shows how much the voting rights for African Americans have changed since the 1800s. Before the 1870s, African Americans were not given the right to vote because they did not meet the requirements to vote and were looked as lower class individuals since they had previously been enslaved and were mostly uneducated.
African American males were given the right to vote in the 1870 because they passed the fifteenth amendment, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
African American women did not gain their right to vote until 1920, when they passed the Nineteenth Amendment, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
My name is Midajah Heighter and my vote matters, even though I am not eighteen and cannot legally vote. My vote can still make a big difference in the United States once I am able to do so.
My vote will soon matter because it will give me the opportunity to put my opinion into a bigger than school atmosphere and help the United States choose many winners in elections. It will also give me the right to complain about politics and who won which election because I will have been able to try to affect the way the election will turn out.
Lastly my vote matters because I was given the right to vote by all of those men and women who fought for women’s suffrage and all of the African Americans who fought for them to be able to vote. Without the eagerness of those involved in getting the Nineteenth and Fifteenth Amendments passed I would not have the right to vote today.
All in all my vote matters because I will be able to influence the world and be a part of the percentage of young adults that are using their right to vote.
I will be making Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and all the other men and women who fought for women to be able to vote in the late 1800s to 1920 very proud because they fought for a reason.
I will also be making my ancestors proud because I am using the right that some of them only prayed that they would have one day, but I now have because of them. I would not have the right to vote if they had not fought for me, I am eternally grateful.
Hannah Jean Nester – Second Place
As teenagers, many of us think that our voices do not matter nor have any sort of an impact on society. But we are wrong about that, our voice does, in fact, matter.
Our voice is our vote. We are allowed to voice our political opinions through voting. We are the future of our generation. I am blessed to be able to live in the United States, I am lucky to have the freedom and ability to express my opinions about certain things. I don’t always take advantage of that like I should.
Often times, I stop myself from saying things I want to say simply because I am “just a kid” and I don’t think anyone would listen to me.
But we all have unique voices. Without our voices, how would we communicate? How would we be heard? My vote allows me to stand up for myself and what I believe in.
Just like everyone has a different opinion, everyone has a different vote. One single voice has the opportunity to change the world. Take Martin Luther King Jr. as an example. His voice changed the way the world works. He let his voice be heard.
Barack Obama once said “One voice can change a room, and if one voice can change a room, then it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it can change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world. Your vote can change the government you have. Use your vote to the full advantage you can.”
Imagine that on August 23, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. got up on the stage to give a speech and decided “nope, I’m not gonna say anything, my one voice would not matter anyways.” And just not have given the speech. His one voice was a call to end racism, giving people civil and economic rights, changing the world, and changing the way we see it.
If he had not given the speech, would schools still be segregated? Would black people still have to enter an area through a different door, or perhaps wouldn’t be able to enter a place at all? Or maybe we would still have to drink out of separate water fountains.
Just think, maybe if he had not given his speech, blacks and whites would still be very much separate today. This one man, this hero, used his voice and changed the world forever. “I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.”
Mr. King was right, it was a revolutionizing speech. He endured hate, threats, and people challenging him. He got through it all and made our world a better place. His one voice ended so many of the problems our nation had. That was just in 1963, imagine what your voice could do now.
Barack Obama made history being the first african american president, and I honestly do not believe that he could have won and became president if he bit his tongue at every chance he got. He did promotions, he spoke at events, he changed the views of some people, he got much of America to believe in the same things he believed in.
Obama stated; “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America. There’s a United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America. There’s a United States of America.”
While there is no more segregation, there is still many small minded people in our world that believe blacks and whites are to be treated different, or that Latinos and Asians just came to our land to use us, there are also people that believe whites are superior to all other races.
When that is not true at all, we are all created equal, we are all human, no matter what, we are not superior to each other. I, and many other people, believe that he has made a huge impact on our world, with the examples he set, the actions he put forth, and the determination he showed in doing good for our country.
I truly believe that Mr. Barack Obama was the best president that this world has seen, and will see for a long time.
Now, I have stated two examples of how their one voice had an impact on the world. But why do I believe my voice matters? That is because I believe that if two strong smart men could do that, so could I. We need to vote for the people like Obama and King Jr.
Even though I am young and just getting started with my adult life, I wholeheartedly believe that I could make a big difference in this world. When I graduate high school, I am going on to get my Bachelors in psychology, and becoming a counselor.
With that job, my voice could be the reason someone finds their worth. My voice could put a family back together, my voice could talk someone out of one of the darkest times in their life.
If I start with one person or one family, it can build up to me helping the town, to helping the state, to my voice getting out there for America to hear.
The possibilities are endless, we just have to decide what to do with them.
Alexis McGuire – Third Place
Imagine sitting behind the television, watching the votes tallied in and the President of the United States is finally chosen. Crowds would erupt with cheers as they see the person they believe in become the next leader for our free country, and it was all because they decided to exercise their right to vote on Election Day.
Being able to vote shows that we have the freedom to pick and choose who we would like to have run our country. This results in showing that the people’s choices could be what our future turns out to be by just who they choose to be our president.
A single vote can choose who becomes part of our Congress, the Senate, the governor, the government, and, of course, our president. This shows how important voting is and that every single vote counts, including my own.
My vote matters because I could possibly help a large group of people put an important person into power, and this person could end up being a savior for America. We fought for this freedom and it is our civil duties as citizens to use our right to vote in order to put the right people in these places.
It is my duty as a citizen of the United States to give my opinion and to choose who I think is best fit for running this country. Our countrymen fought for this right and for this type of independence in the past, so everyone should have a say in who we have in our government.
I believe that every vote matters because if we didn’t have a majority of people voting then it would be hard to decide on who we should put into the different branches of power (government). If we didn’t vote then I believe that the people that we already have in the government would start choosing who they would like to have in power and maybe our democracy would turn into something completely different.
If we decide that we are not going to vote it will show that we as a whole country do not care about who we have in power, and that we do not care if certain things end up getting fixed. That shows why every single vote is essential for helping choose who we want in power because otherwise it shows that we do not care, and we feel it isn’t worth our time.
When we turn eighteen, it is always stressed to young adults that they need to register to vote because we are the future, If we do not register to vote and if we do not decide to vote then there would be no point in having anyone try and run for a position in our government because no one would care about who is in office.
But that is why I believe it is so important to vote because as a United States citizen it is, once again, my duty. Once I become the age of eighteen, I will exercise my right to vote because my voice deserves to be heard and I should be allowed to have a say in who tries to run this country because there are certain people that have my best interests in their hearts. There are others who would completely agree with me on this subject because not everyone in the past was allowed to vote at all.
Women and African Americans, for example, were never allowed to vote at all for at least hundreds of years. Now that we finally have this opportunity, we should take it up and use it as much as we can so we can be heard.
Everyone has a voice, everyone has an opinion, and everyone has a belief that should be met by someone. That someone could be an individual running for a spot in our government or it could be someone running to be the president, either way, if they have a belief that someone else as then they are more than likely to get a person’s vote.
This is why every vote is critical for someone to get elected because a horrible person could end up in office and it would all be an example of we as a whole country deciding that we were not going to vote in the upcoming elections.
A person should take up the chance to vote when they can because there are several different countries that do now allow their people to choose “their leader.”
We should appreciate having this privilege because there are so many out there who do not get the same “opportunity.” That is why every vote matters, including mine!
