Yet again, Americans voted (precisely 120.5 million this year). But as many voters as there are, the right to vote is a right not everyone possesses.

The main factor in gaining it is residency in a certain place. For example, in Iowa a person needs only to be an American citizen eighteen years old, not claim the right to vote 18 else and establish residency by living here for 30 days. The other states in the Union have similar standards.

For most Americans, voting is the lone activity that marks them as citizens. The demands of employers and families make a consistent, high level of political participation impossible. 

The language in which state legislatures couch their election and voter registration laws suggests that there is more to citizenship than simply voting. Iowa’s election laws state: “It is the intent of the general assembly to facilitate the registration of eligible residents of this state.” Not just residents — eligible residents.

The implication in our Legislature’s statement of intent is that simply living in a place does not confer citizenship. Citizenship is more than just casting votes once every two years. Even today, we obtain the right to do so through more than simply existing in a place; we have to invest some stake of ourselves in our communities before we can participate in making political decisions.

The conception of citizenship used in our modern election laws is at least as old as Aristotle and the Greeks who bequeathed to us the inheritance of political activity. To them, citizens shared in the ruling of their communities rather than merely existing as inhabitants of a land.

A citizen, the philosopher said, was a “juryman and member of the assembly, and to some or all such holders of definite offices is reserved the right of deliberating or judging about some things or about all things.”

Involvement in politics requires us to forego what might be in our own interest. We have to spend time among other statesmen-citizens, which prevents us from pursuing to the fullest extent our own personal happiness or gain. Aristotle noted: “The legislator or statesman is concerned entirely with the state.”

The price of political participation is and should be, then, a forfeiture to some extent of personal well-being. We ought to recall the whole reason Aristotle was so interested in politics: by his logic, it was only useful to examine things that existed (such as man) in the state they assumed after their development was complete, when they had come to fruition. In his world, the quality that separates man from all other creatures is his inclination to live with other members of his race. Humans are complete only when they gain distinction in the eyes of their peers by acting for the sake of the community to which they belong.

Politics is like religion. In line with Aristotle’s assessment of politics, that it happens in the view of others, Jesus Christ said: “Again, I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by my father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them.”

We are in the habit of setting and forgetting politics, once every two years in November. And when the next one rolls around, we are surprised that little has changed for the better.

Without an electorate whose members take the time, energy and sometimes the resources to write to their newspapers and public officers, work for political campaigns by making phone calls or door-knocking, get in touch with other politically inclined people or keep up with current events, our nation will persist in a condition like that of the past few years where, from June 2011 to the present, congressional approval ratings have not exceeded 20 percent and disapproval ratings have not dipped below 73 percent.

Voting, however, happens in the midst of privacy.

The real political activities that voting enables do not.