Preparing to vote

(Children’s Defense Fund) – There is now just one month to go until Election Day in the United States, and in some states early voting and mail-in voting has already begun. In others, deadlines to register to vote or make sure a voter registration is current and correct are approaching over the next few weeks. This means the time for all eligible voters to make sure they have a plan to vote is now! Any voter who isn’t enthusiastic about the ability to place a vote and have her say – in midterms and general elections, for local, state and national leaders – is wasting an opportunity others have struggled and died for. Those of us who participated in and lived through the Civil Rights Movement know firsthand that the right to vote is something Black Americans were fighting and dying for not that long ago. Many of them could not have imagined, as Sen. Robert Kennedy correctly predicted, that in a generation we would have our first Black president.Related Stories In places around the world others are still struggling and sacrificing for a freedom some Americans now take for granted. We have a responsibility to those who could not...