Honor Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by registering to vote and casting a ballot

In recent months, we’ve been inundated with pundit analyses and campaign messaging about the enormous implications of the 2020 presidential election.

“Vote like your life depends on it.”

“This should be viewed as the most consequential election of our lifetimes.”

“Our democracy is at stake.”

Unfortunately, this time it’s not all hyperbole.

Tuesday is National Voter Registration Day, and there needs to be a push in all local communities to ensure that Americans are positioned to cast a ballot. Registration is an important first step, particularly this year.

Voter participation countrywide has been abysmal in recent elections. According to the Pew Research Center, America ranked 26th of 32 developed nations for the percentage of eligible voters who took part in the last presidential election. By Pew's count, 55.7% of the U.S. voting age population cast a vote in 2016.

America, we can and should do better.

I spent much of the weekend thinking about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died Friday at the age of 87 after a two-decade battle with cancer. She was a champion for voting rights, and she wrote a powerful dissent in 2013 when the court struck down a crucial section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by a 5-4 vote. The ruling enabled states with a history of voter discrimination to escape Justice Department oversight.

“It is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm,” Ginsburg wrote, “because you are not getting wet.”

Americans are throwing away their right to vote, even as the country drowns in political polarization. The fight over her Supreme Court seat notwithstanding, if there is one way to honor Ginsburg — a woman who stood tall for Americans' freedoms even as she experienced significant personal health crises — it is simply to vote.

After all, this Election Day will be framed in the history of a global pandemic. And there have been significant challenges to voting because of COVID-19. New voter registrations have dropped dramatically in the United States as stay-at-home orders and social distancing requirements shuttered places where advocates engage with voters.

Americans missed so many opportunities for the contact-based registration drives we are used to seeing at concerts, state fairs, sporting events, art festivals and other public venues. Another avenue disappeared for months when departments of motor vehicles closed, thwarting those who would have been prompted to register to vote while registering a vehicle or renewing a driver’s license.

But not all is lost. Social media has proved to serve as a strong arm in voter engagement, particularly reaching those under 30. Last week, Snapchat reported that more than 400,000 people had used the platform to register to vote. And Foot Locker has partnered with Rock the Vote in transforming more than 2,000 retail locations into voting registration sites in an effort to encourage turnout among the more than 4 million young people eligible to cast ballots for the first time. You might chuckle at the idea, but I believe it's crucial to reach would-be voters where they are — including our filter-loving or sneaker-loving youth.

Because this is an election year like no other. For the past six months, it has been difficult to focus on little more than the novel coronavirus and the civil unrest in many American cities. But we can't afford to lose sight of the many other pressing issues and policies we must reckon with as a country: immigration, climate change, systemic racism, income inequality and health care. With each, we must ask ourselves who we believe is best suited to serve as commander in chief for the next four years.

Ultimately, you must decide which candidate best aligns with your values and political ideology. But regardless of your politics, it’s important to participate in America’s electoral process. That can only happen if you register and vote.

National columnist Suzette Hackney is a member of USA TODAY’S Editorial Board. Contact her at shackney@usatoday.com or on Twitter: @suzyscribe

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Honor Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by registering to vote