Ancient Greece offered one of the earliest forms of democracy in the Western world, followed soon after by the Roman Republic (509 BC). And, as most of us know, our Founding Fathers patterned the U.S. government on these forms of governing. Intrinsic in a democracy is the action of voting.

Today, as a nation, we vote and elect officials into power with the idea that they will govern for us. We live in a representative democracy. Some states and local communities at times grant citizens the power to vote directly on spending proposals and bond approvals. In some states, referendums and propositions can be voted on by the population at large and are then presented to the state legislature for consideration or even obtain passage by popular vote. This is a type of "direct democracy," sometimes known as "pure democracy."

Although this is not our current form of government and is not the democracy envisioned or created by the framers of the Constitution, it is the oldest form of government in the United States. In On the Social Contract (1762), Jean Jacques Rousseau was among the influential thinkers who championed this form of government for small states (though not for large ones). Through their own study of history, our founding fathers decided that a direct democracy produced only the will of the mob and, over time, was doomed to the very tyranny it sought to outstep. It was this belief that led to the creation of the establishment of the representative democracy we now have. Nineteen states, however, still use direct democracy in some form to this day.

Despite the fact that voting is a civic duty and one of the few ways citizens can determine their own leadership, in the United States, only 55 to 60 percent of eligible voters actually go the polls in presidential years, and only 35 to 50 percent do so in midterm elections, far fewer than in most developed countries.

Although we have inherited many of our ideas about democracy from the ancients, the manner of voting has changed. Athenians used pottery shards to vote their electors into office as well as to ostracize people or run them out of town by majority vote. Today, we use a variety of ballot types, paper ballots, mechanical voting machines, punch cards, digital recording electronics, and optical scans being the most common. Whatever form of ballot your community offers, we encourage you to celebrate your right to vote and make your vote count. Our future as a democratic republic depends on citizens performing this duty.

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