March 23, 2025

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

2025, in a small village north of bustling New York City where a mayor and two trustees were chosen by paper ballot in a former stone church (1813) built in part by slaves. Two local women long on citizen service asked us our names and addresses. That’s all. We were duly registered, thank you. Handed paper ballots, we recorded votes in private, folded the paper and inserted them into a well-worn, wooden box.

What immense pride that brought, what reaffirmation of constitutional rights, gathered over the centuries. In a historic meeting house in a community so small that it needs no modern voting machines. So simple, so trusting. This is the America Esther Churchill and Christina Schopper, my elementary school social studies teachers, taught about. It is the America for which Winfield Gunther, my uncle, gave up three fingers to machine gun fire in the Hurtgen Forest, Germany, 1945.

As we left voting, it felt as if we had just exited the Pennsylvania State House in 1787 after observing the signing of the Constitution. Motions leading to the American right to vote began there, albeit not for all and not at once. Hard battles to come. The experiment in a democratic republic was launched, to be continued.

Major mistakes, including deprivation of rights, great inequality, greed and passing of souls because of hatred, prejudice, ignorance and deliberate indifference would mar – do mar – our nation’s evolving history. Happening now, again. Yet movement toward betterment has been there too, has been since some Americans got a ticket to ride on that Constitution signing day in Philly. May the promise not be forgotten.

Our democracy, if we “can keep it,” as Benjamin Franklin said, has always been deliberately simple to absorb, to understand. It is not about complicated legal language. It is not about grand political speeches. It is not about those elected and other officials who become self-important with power, beholden to special interests or even to fanatic bent. It is, as on July 4, 1776, simply about the rights of man, now the rights of humanity.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. …” As written in the Declaration of Independence. “We the People of the United States. …” As written in the Constitution Preamble.

These two quotations – especially the “We” in them – are the mission statement of our United States. So is the well-used ballot box in the old meeting house in Upper Nyack, N.Y. Simple to remember. And remember we must.

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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