Letters

If you are not a Native American, your family comes from immigrant stock. Our USA includes a global conglomerate of refugees. How amazing that my family and yours gave up their countries that they knew, left their families and crossed a huge ocean to a land of freedom.

Each family has a variation of this theme, yet they came for the freedoms we stand for, which the first and most important is the right to vote.

How hard must it have been for our families to make that decision to leave it all and come here sight unseen. Our families gave up everything familiar, to have a voice … to vote.

How can we forget so quickly what are families gave up for us? How did we forget to have a voice in our own lives?

Are you talking to yourself about not voting this year? Maybe it’s because you are tired of politics? How about that you can’t decide? Or maybe COVID-19? Um … or thinking that the mail-in ballots won’t be counted?

No, that’s not it, is it? That I can’t be counted on to fill in the voting form correctly and then be disqualified? How about this: I work, so I can’t make it to my neighborhood voting location, because they are open during my work hours. (I work from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., especially on Election Day.)

Our family roots have struggled in ways we can never imagine for the right to vote. Our veterans have died for our freedom and choices in America. Our young people gone to war for this right for us.

Be your own voice and honor your family heritage — cast your vote for America and for your family, both past and present.

Elizabeth Plate

Quogue