Letter to the editor

“Forty Acres,” she told me she had written in on her ballot, when I asked Destiny who she picked for president. Destiny’s answer was deeply moving to me, even if I wish she had voted for Hillary. Destiny, a young African American voter from Durham, understands southern history and the long struggle for freedom in our state better than most people I know, a history that been filled with broken promises for our state’s poorest residents.

But Destiny was, in fact, really, really happy to have just voted. She is a formerly incarcerated person who did not know that her voting rights as a citizen in North Carolina had been automatically restored when she finished her parole two years ago. I had the honor of informing her of that fact when I canvassed her at the downtown bus station yesterday afternoon, and then drove her to the early voting site at the Devil’s Den at 309 Oregon St. Destiny was most excited by her vote for Mike Morgan, an African American judge who is running for State Supreme Court. If he wins that seat, a progressive majority would be restored to the State Supreme Court, along with the possibility of challenging many of our state’s unjust laws, such as HB-2 and the unfair racial gerrymandering that packed most of the state’s black voters and progressive whites into just three congressional districts. In the last congressional election, Democrats received more votes for Congress than Republican candidates statewide, but won just three of 13 Congressional seats. “Justice is on this ballot,” Destiny told me when she walked into the voting site. She emerged ten minutes later, beaming, thanking me for having helped her reclaim her political voice.

As a historian and lifelong champion of voting rights, I have been moved by the voices of young voters like Destiny and many Duke students, who in voting for the first time not only stood up to be counted, but began a lifelong relationship with this noble, but flawed experiment we call Democracy.

But I am deeply anxious this election: not simply by the increasingly likely prospect of a Donald Trump presidency, but by the stunning apathy and political disengagement of many really smart Duke students. For Duke students who think that voting “just feeds the beast” as one undergraduate recently put it to me, I ask, think again! First, by opting not to vote, you are ceding your political voice to voters you don’t know, half of whom are now supporting Donald Trump for President. We are among the very closest states in the nation according to recent polls, with just 0.4 percent separating Trump and Clinton. Second, as Destiny said, Justice is on this ballot this election, along with which party will control the U.S. Senate. By voting in deadlocked races for U.S. Senate and State Supreme Court, you get to shape the legislative fate of the next Presidential administration as well as laws like HB-2 and the Voting ID law that recently disfranchised thousands of North Carolina citizens, including many Duke undergraduates whose out-of-precinct ballots were thrown into the trash in 2014.

Because the North Carolina voter ID law has been temporarily stayed by a lower Appeals Court, early voting hours and same day registration have been fully restored to students at Duke and across the state. Voting could not be easier this election. You have hourly shuttles driving voters to the early voting site at the Devil’s Den; you have Uber support for Duke students to get a ride to the Devil’s Den, entirely free. And all Duke students need is their Duke ID to register and vote in the closest state in the nation. If you requested an absentee ballot that never arrived, you can STILL register and vote at the Devil’s Den until it closes at 1 p.m. this Saturday.

You may not like the choices on this year’s ballot. But if you do not vote, you send a political message that is as bad if not worse than anything the candidates have uttered this year. That message is that Duke students don’t need to be disfranchised by law: they have found a way to silence themselves, and can be ignored without consequence in the future. For your sake—and the fate of our beleaguered Democracy and future generations confronting everything from climate change to gendered, racial and economic injustice at home, I urge you to show up, stand up and be counted.

Gunther Peck is an associate professor of history and public policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy.