NEW YORK CITY-

At some point in each of our lives we’ll all go to great lengths to do something that we truly believe in. Sometimes it comes down to doing something for the principle of the matter, while other times we do it because we believe it’s our duty. Jury duty would be a great example of someone’s sense of civic duty. Despite jury duty being required by law, anyone with the desire and a lame excuse, can usually get out of jury duty, and many people take that route. But that’s not everyone, some people summoned for jury duty take it very seriously and will commit to the long, and sometimes thankless hours required to carry out their civic duty.

But it’s not only jury duty that people take seriously as their civic duty. Another example would be something most people take more seriously than jury duty, however, it’s not forced upon anyone by law, and is a right for most, but also a choice. Voting. In America no one is forced to vote, yet, most choose to because they want to have a voice. Take the case of voting in the Presidential Election every four years. As the saying goes, “Every vote counts,” and if you lump together many thousands of “every vote counts” you may have something that could actually matter. But no matter what anyone says, the odds of any individual vote making a difference in any Presidential Election is zero, after all, the Electoral College is really what decides who the next President will be. But I’m not here to educate anyone about how the President is elected, if you want to know that I would suggest a quick visit to Wikipedia, where you can look up the Electoral College.

But when it comes to voting for the President most people know that they don’t really have any say in the outcome, it’s more about making a statement and voicing their opinion. Still, despite the reality of it, most American citizens still take their right to vote very seriously. And please do not take the tone of this post the wrong way, I fully support every American casting their vote (and I do myself every election). The tone of this post is more to set up what the post is really about.

New Zealand-born Susan Scott-Ker and her Moroccan husband are American citizens. In fact, they had lived in America for 13 years on Green Cards, but got tired of their opinions not mattering, so they became American citizens (just a year before the 2008 Presidential Election) simply so they could vote and have their opinions finally count. But a few months after becoming American citizens Scott-Ker was transferred to India and as of October, 2008, the couple worked and lived in India. While there they had waited very patiently for their New York State absentee ballots to arrive in India so they could cast their ballots for the next President of the United States. As time went on and the ballots did not arrive they began calling around, including the American Consulate. They also considered hiring a round trip courier so they could get their ballots counted. Reality set in and they realized even if they had the ballots in hand, they would not have enough time to get them back in time.

The couple weighed their options and considered going on a vacation so they could kick back on a beautiful beach somewhere. Instead, they jumped on a plane on a Tuesday evening catching a flight from Bangalore to New Delhi, about 1,100 miles. Then from New Delhi to Chicago, another 7,500 miles. By 5:30 on Wednesday morning, they had cleared immigration and customs at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, and flew the last 700 miles to La Guardia.

They were in New York six days before the election. The entire journey lasted 22 hours and covered 9,300 miles. They went nearly as far as humanly possibly in one direction around the globe, costing them $5,000, all for a right they so dearly wanted, and something many take for granted, the right to vote.

The moral of the story: This one’s twofold……You gotta do what you gotta do……..and no one ever has any excuse again not to vote (that is unless you hate both candidates, and that’s a whole different story).

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