Editor, Gazette-Journal:

At our founding, only the landed gentry, meaning white males, were allowed to vote in any elections. The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gave the right to vote to black males in 1870. Women had to wait until 1920 for the 19th Amendment to be ratified. Of course, it wasn’t ratified by all the states then. In fact, Virginia didn’t ratify the 19th Amendment until 1952. But don’t feel bad, Virginians. North Carolina didn’t ratify it until 1971.

The right to the franchise has been a long and hard-fought battle for many of us. And nearly every day, someone in electronic or print media despairs of having our most precious Constitutional right torn from us. And yet, many of us give away this precious right without a thought to its importance. Do you vote in all elections?

Records show that more people vote in presidential elections than in local and state elections, as if the local and state elections had little import. Nothing c...