By Legislator Debra Mulé
Two hundred-fifty years ago, on July 4, 1776, 56 signatories changed the course of history when they issued the Declaration of Independence.
Thus began a noble experiment in representative government that has stood the test of a quarter of a millennium and became a beacon of freedom for the world. At the heart of this journey is the fact that government by the people is always a work in progress, and that each of us has a role to play.
In breaking from the rule of Great Britain, Americans declared that “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
During the centuries that followed, our nation has made considerable strides toward achieving that ideal. From the onset, freedom of speech, a free press, and the free practice of religion without government interference were enshrined within the words of the United States Constitution.
The march toward voting rights for American citizens has been especially notable. After another decades-long battle, American women won universal suffrage with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.
The Constitution’s 15th Amendment, which prohibited individuals from being denied the right to vote based upon their race, was ratified in 1870; however, it took until the 24th Amendment’s ratification and a Supreme Court ruling to outlaw all forms of poll taxes, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to ban discriminatory literacy tests. All of these were tools that Jim Crow states used to suppress the votes of Black Americans, communities of color, and the working poor who could not afford to pay to vote.
By 1971, at a time when the Vietnam War was raging and public outcry against the draft and the conflict was escalating, the 26th Amendment lowered the minimum voting age from 21 to 18 – meaning that if someone was old enough to be drafted, fight and possibly die in America’s armed forces, they were old enough to vote as well.
I have little doubt that the freedoms that built the bedrock of our nation have been a catalyst for the ingenuity and daring spirit that has driven us to the forefront of economic prosperity, scientific discovery, and a standard of living that has been the envy of the world for generations. As we note these facts, it is important to simultaneously recall Benjamin Franklin’s words at the first Constitutional Convention of 1787.
When Elizabeth Willing Powel asked him, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” He replied, “A republic – if you can keep it.” Those words make it clear that our form of government does not happen by accident, and it requires all our attention, care and advocacy to preserve and strengthen it.
At numerous points throughout our 250-year history, the American people have stood at a crossroads – the American Civil War, the Great Depression, the McCarthy era and Watergate all come to mind. As we have done in the past, I have great confidence that we can appeal to our better angels and harness the inherent power each of us has as Americans by exercising our constitutionally protected free speech rights and voting for the people who will serve us at all levels of government.
We can use our voices and our votes to restore dignity, order, and humanity to how we enforce immigration laws and secure our border, to repair the social safety net that meets the basic needs of our most vulnerable citizens, and to prioritize the safety of our food supply over the profits of corporate conglomerates.
Each of us can use our voice and our spending power to repel forces that would seek to undermine the independence of America’s news media – and we can use our vote to resist organized efforts that intend to erode our faith in fair, free elections.
Working together, each of us can do our part to ensure that we are heard loudly and clearly in the halls of government and continue our pursuit of a more perfect American union.
Debra Mulé, of Freeport, is the Alternate Deputy Minority Leader of the Nassau County Legislature. She was elected to the Legislature in 2017.