Give Us the Ballot: Choosing Life in a Democracy

There are moments when the ballot stops being an election-day errand and becomes a statement about who we are and what we intend to leave our children.

This is one of those moments.

For African Americans, the right to vote has never been theoretical. It was purchased at an extraordinary price. Men and women marched for it, organized for it, were arrested for it, lost jobs over it, and some were beaten and killed for daring to demand what the Constitution said citizenship already guaranteed.

So the question before us is not simply, “Who are you voting for?”

The deeper question is: What are you voting for?

The Ballot Has Always Been About More Than Politics

After the Civil War, the 15th Amendment barred denying the vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. During Reconstruction, Black Americans registered, voted, held office, and served in state legislatures and in Congress.

The resistance was just as organized. As Reconstruction was dismantled, states across the South built machinery to separate Black citizens from the ballot: poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, economic retaliation, racial terror.

And still they marched. On March 7, 1965, demonstrators walking from Selma to Montgomery were attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Later that year the Voting Rights Act became law.

Never forget the order of those events. Someone had to march before Congress acted. Someone had to speak before America listened. Someone had to bleed before the nation changed.

“Give Us the Ballot”

In 1957, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom and delivered one of his most important speeches on voting rights. King understood that the ballot decides who writes laws, who administers justice, who sets priorities, and who controls public money.

Voting alone will not end poverty, fix schools, build housing, or guarantee health care. But elected officials make decisions about every one of them. Budgets are political documents. Elections decide who gets the authority to write them.

When someone tells me their vote does not matter, I understand the frustration. Communities have heard promises and watched politicians disappear. That disappointment should produce accountability, not abandonment. If someone fails to represent us, we strengthen our voice. We do not surrender it.

Voting Is Choosing

Moses told a people standing at the edge of their future: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life.” One generation had wandered; another stood at the threshold. They inherited history, but they were responsible for what came next.

The text is theological, not partisan. It sets a principle: choices have consequences, and every generation decides what future it intends to build.

So we examine policies. We study records. We demand specifics. And after the election, we remember what we were told before it. Democracy requires an informed electorate, not merely an excited one.

The Jericho Road Is Still Crowded

A man traveling to Jericho falls among thieves and is left beside the road. Religious people pass him. A Samaritan stops, and does not first ask whether helping benefits his own side.

Our Jericho Road runs through neighborhoods, hospitals, grocery stores, schools, polling places and workplaces. Along it: a family deciding whether the paycheck covers groceries and rent, a senior worried about medicine, a working mother looking for child care, a returning citizen seeking a second chance, children whose opportunities are set by ZIP code.

The old road warns us that suffering can become familiar enough to walk past. The road we are on asks whether our politics will describe wounded communities or bind their wounds.

The question is not whether our side wins. It is: what happens to our neighbor?

The Church Is Not Loyal to the Donkey or the Elephant

The Black Church mattered in American democracy because it was one of the few institutions Black people controlled. Our churches became meeting halls and organizing centers. Congregations registered voters, educated communities, and challenged injustice.

That legacy must continue. But the Church must never become the religious department of a political party. Our allegiance is higher. We are loyal to the Lamb.

That means telling the truth regardless of who holds the White House, the Statehouse, City Hall or Congress. When policies help people, say so. When they harm people, say that too.

The prophetic Church does not ask first which party proposed it. It asks whether it is just, whether it respects human dignity, whether it protects the vulnerable. That is a higher standard than partisanship.

Voice, Power, Access, Representation

The vote is about more than a candidate. It is about who is heard, who influences decisions, who can participate, and whether officials stay accountable.

Ohio gives us reason to examine those words carefully. Republicans have held the governorship for all but four years since 1991; Democrat Ted Strickland served from 2007 through 2010. Republicans held the Ohio Senate throughout; Democrats controlled the Ohio House in 2009 and 2010. Since 2011, Republicans have held the governorship and both chambers. In 2026, Ohio remains a Republican trifecta.

Those facts do not tell anyone how to vote. They tell us to examine the record of the people who have held the power. Test the claims against the evidence — schools, housing, wages, public safety, health. When one party governs that long, voters have every right to ask what that power produced.

Do not surrender your judgment to a party label, an advertisement or a personality. Ask who had the power, what the decisions produced, who had access, and whose voices were represented. Then vote from knowledge instead of assumption.

Choose Life

There is anger in our politics and distrust in our institutions. But fear and cynicism cannot govern us. Our ancestors faced far more restrictive circumstances and still marched, registered, voted and organized, because they believed tomorrow could be different.

Citizenship does not happen only on Election Day. Know who represents you. Watch city council, the school board, the statehouse. Read the proposals. Hold the promises. Our ancestors struggled so we could be participants, not spectators.

Moses stood before a generation entering its future and said: choose life, that both you and your descendants may live. They could not live forever on yesterday’s deliverance. They had reached their moment of decision. So have we.

Give us the ballot. And once it is in our hands, let us have the courage, wisdom and responsibility to use it.

Choose life.
Choose participation.
Choose responsibility.
Choose the future.

And then get to work building the community and the country our children deserve.

— Dr. C. Jay Matthews I