On voting.

Yesterday morning, I left my house a little earlier than usual, walking down the block to a plain, unadorned brick hall that regularly hosts community events ranging from AA meetings to meat raffles. (The latter, apparently, are a real thing here in New England.) I walked through a hallway that smelled of stale coffee, into a large, bare room with two tables of cheerful volunteers and a dozen or so voting booths, standing against the wall in a neat line, balanced on spindly legs.

I gave my name and street address to the women at the first table, in exchange for a ballot and an information booklet. After spending a couple of minutes filling in circles in a booth (no one looking over my shoulder), I fed the ballot into the big gray box next to the second table. The volunteers there gave me a sticker (which, as we all know, is just as exciting for adults as it is for kids). I thanked them and headed out to catch my train to work.

Every time I exercise my right to vote, I marvel at the quiet, peaceful simplicity of the process: register, show up, give your name, make your choice, submit your ballot to be counted. Everyone has a say; no one’s vote carries more or less weight than anyone else’s.

Especially in these midterm elections, when the electoral college does not come into play, the process is beautifully, humbly straightforward: one citizen, one vote. In town halls and libraries and even grocery stores across the country, my fellow citizens – rich and poor, male and female, of every ethnicity and political persuasion – can exercise this fundamental American right. (And receive the stickers to show for it.)

I am as sick of campaign ads as the next person, already bracing myself for the firestorm of political rhetoric that will start long before the 2016 presidential election (and which, some would say, never really ends). I grow weary of the personal attacks, on Facebook and elsewhere, that attempt to reduce a person’s identity and character to the box marked on his or her ballot. I won’t tell you which candidates I chose on Tuesday, and I won’t ask you which ones you chose. That information belongs to each of us and no one else.

But I will say this: I hope you voted.

I hope you voted, because the system of a democracy depends on its citizens’ willingness to participate, to decide for themselves which laws they would like to uphold or repeal, and whom they would like to serve as elected officials. I know democracy is often a complicated thing, shadowed by back-door deals and mutual political favors and the byzantine processes of government. But I believe it still works, and it still matters. As a woman, I am particularly aware that I owe my right to vote to a number of brave women who fought for it – and I have a responsibility to exercise it, to honor their work and their sacrifice.

As Ann Patchett noted recently in the New York Times, “voting is like brickwork – the trick is to keep at it every election season, laying brick after brick.” I am not naive enough to believe that one vote on one day will repair all the problems that plague this (sometimes shaky) edifice of democracy. But I believe the act of showing up, trowel (or pen) in hand, is a worthy start.

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