Solemei Scamaroni | The world needs Penn to vote

“You are happy people, you don’t know who your next president will be.” 

This statement, albeit initially confusing, reveals Americans’ responsibility to defend democracy. It was made by Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of the Belarusian Democratic Movement, at Perry World House’s “Standing Up to a Dictator” event on Sep. 25. Tsikhanouskaya registered herself as a presidential candidate in 2020 after her husband, Siarhei Tsikhanouski, was arrested for voicing his pro-democracy presidential aspirations. At the time, she was an English teacher. Yet, on Aug. 9, 2020, she won the Belarusian presidential election, defeating longstanding dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko. However, Lukashenko refused to accept the election’s results, and she was forced into exile. 

Tsikhanouskaya was called to service. She answered then, as she continues to now, by fighting for free and fair elections — for the right, the system, and the society we Americans take for granted. She’s not the only one. From the dissidents in Hong Kong to those in Saudi Arabia, people around the world are bleeding for the right to vote. People like Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, whom I had the opportunity to meet at the World Affairs Council in Houston a few weeks before the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Shortly thereafter, Kara-Murza was imprisoned for his anti-war stance. But he, like Tsikhanouskaya, proved to me, an average American citizen, that defending democracy is my responsibility. 

After all, the Russians who lost their glimpse of democracy in the early 2000s were people like me. The Germans who lost the Weimar Republic in the 1930s were people like you. Now, populist leaders with a penchant for authoritarianism are rising once more in democracies around the world because citizens are questioning whether democracy is worth the effort. Tsikhanouskaya and Kara-Murza prove it is. It’s why they fight tenaciously for it, like the American revolutionaries, abolitionists, and suffragettes before them. You too, dear reader, are called upon to defend the democracy you have. You do so, by voting.  

For each of us, our lives are defined by a struggle for power. Take students, who vie for the power of an education, of financial prosperity, of an elite social network. Yet, by not voting, we relinquish our ultimate power, our voice, our ability to shape the world. In addition to all the domestic stakes, from abortion to immigration policy, as Americans, we wield tremendous power in affecting the war in Ukraine, conflict in the Middle East, and actions of dictators around the world. This power is amplified by the fact that Pennsylvania, a swing state, is considered to be the most important state in determining the outcome of the presidential election. Thus, our responsibility and duty to “We the People” goes beyond the American people. 

This is especially salient for you, dear reader, as part of the Penn community. You attend an academic institution created by a founding father of American democracy. Benjamin Franklin famously said that the Constitutional Convention birthed “a republic, if you can keep it.” We, Penn affiliates, have a unique responsibility to ensure we keep our republic, the beacon for democracy around the world. 

With that in mind, I call upon you not only to vote but when doing so to consider your role as a voter, as a patriot. Beyond party affiliation and personal political stances, your first duty is to ensure the candidate you choose will respect, uphold, and champion our democracy. In the presidential election, for example, we have a candidate who threatened the peaceful transition of power on Jan. 6, 2021, consistently discredits democratic institutions, and says he would prosecute political rivals. Consider if this candidate is the best choice to champion the free world. As Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor said in the recent ruling on expanding presidential immunity, “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.” Allow me to make an amendment. With fear for our democracy, I vote. 

I vote to prove to dictators around the world, to prove to those fighting against them like Tsikhanouskaya that a government for the people, by the people, and of the people shall not perish from this earth. I vote to prove democracy enriches our lives, our world. At the Perry World House event, Tsikhanouskaya said, “Democracy is like air. It seems easy, like breathing. But when you lose it, you suffocate.” President Biden won the state of Pennsylvania in 2020 by a margin of 80,500 votes. The approximately 21,824 Penn students eligible to vote can make a tremendous difference in this election, in this world. Will you choose to use your vote? What will you use it for? Will “we the people” breathe or suffocate? It’s up to you, the patriot. 

SOLEMEI SCAMARONI is a College first year studying politics, philosophy, and economics from Houston, TX. Her email is solemei@sas.upenn.edu.