More than 45 years ago, then-President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act. Until then, some states had refused to enforce the 15th Amendment, which prohibits each state in the United States from prohibiting any citizen the right to vote based on race, color of previous condition of servitude, meaning slavery.

If you look at the Voting Rights Act, it generally follows the 15th Amendment, but in this case it applied a nationwide prohibition against outright denying people the right to register to vote, as had occurred in some states in the Deep South, including Alabama. The law also prohibited states from stopping people from voting based on literacy tests, some which were out and out ridiculous, i.e. how many bubbles are in a bar of soap?

Today, more than a generation later, people still do not register to vote. Sadly, they do not exercise their right to go to the polls and mark a ballot.

And yet, many complain.

It would appear in this year of celebration of such a momentous occasion, more would receive the cards and mail them back in or go to their computers and fill out the forms to send in so they could become registered voters.

Our democracy needs all its people.

It needs to hear all voices.

The one equal way to ensure the people’s voices are heard are at the polls.

If you are not registered, please do so.

And in the next election, please exercise that right.