VOICES be heard! VOTES be cast! Voting is happening and by the time you read this, over 28 million votes will have already been cast in this crazy election year. It took 100 years and then some, for all women to have the right to vote. As our good friends, Queen Sugar Actress, Tina Lifford and Pamela Culpepper, Co-Founder of Have Her Back, LLC., shared during Generation W’s VISION 20/20, women today stand on the shoulders of multitudes of powerful, courageous women who have paved the way for us to have a voice and a say in how our nation will be governed. Our collective voices have real power to impact change but only if we honor the hard-fought sacrifices required to implement change. While most democratic governments consider participation in elections to be a right of citizenship, there are others who consider it to be a citizen’s civic duty and mandate voter participation. Our track record as a citizenry has not been stellar. On average, ONLY 58% of eligible voters cast their ballots. It’s sad, but something that we are empowered to change, so let’s do it. Let’s engage in the process and make the effort to exercise our constitutional right. There has been lots of encouragement spurring us to VOTE, and we are adding ours. There are lots of places you can go to find voter and election information for your specific area. We like this one from the League of Women Voter’s Education Fund. Representation comes when we participate in the process. Our democracy continues to be a work in progress and progress requires work. We have marked our calendars, noting the early voting windows so we can plan our votes and secure our ballots at the polls. While we know that is not possible everywhere, do remember, every vote counts, provided you ensure that your vote will count, check your signature and make sure if you are mailing it in, it gets there by your state’s deadline. With so much at stake, let’s own our civic responsibility and VOTE!