Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know that today is Election Day. Then again, the voter registrants may have even found you there.

Yeah, we’re sick of it. For those of us here in Iowa, we’ve been at this since before the Ames Straw Poll, more than a year ago. The commercials have been running ever since — through the Iowa Caucuses, through Super Tuesday, over the summer and long into the fall. The next person who uses the phrase “change we can believe in” may well get slapped.

But there’s more to it than that. Much more, in fact.

From the time that the first Athenian ekklesia met on the Acropolis, democracy has been just a little different from other forms of government. The very word derives from the Greek demos — people — and kratos — power. People power — an idea that continues to change the world to this day.

Fast forward a few millennia.

Millions line up in the South African heat, some waiting in line for days before getting their hands on a ballot — black, standing next to white, standing next to Indian. This was what Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and many others had labored, longed and endured persecution for: the first open election in South African history. By midnight on the last day of voting, apartheid — that evil and despised system of division, oppression and inequality — was dead. People power — the power of equality.

Just more than 10 years later, people again formed long queues in the beating sun — this time in the sands of the Middle East.

Despite threats of a boycott, the ever-present specter of violence and a security ban on civilian motor vehicles, nearly eight and a half million Iraqis went to the polls in the first true election in Iraqi history. Waving thumbs covered in purple indelible ink — a measure designed to prevent double-voting — jubilant Iraqis flocked to the polls, with turnout exceeding 80 percent in some provinces.

Indeed, in the previous Iraqi “referendum,” in which the only name on the ballot had been Saddam Hussein’s, at least 500 people had been jailed for voting in opposition to the ruling regime. In the words of one observer, the choice was simple: “Saddam or Death.” People power — the power of freedom.

Many areas of the world face tremendous instability in the face of their elections, as last December’s Kenyan election showed all too well.

But this is America: The shining city upon a hill, the most prosperous nation on the planet, the only country that, as journalist and author John Gunther put it, “was deliberately founded on a good idea.” Perhaps that’s what makes us so complacent on Election Day. Perhaps it’s voter fatigue. Perhaps it’s not being compelled to vote, as some other nations are. Perhaps it’s a lack of trust in government.

We have no negative consequence of our democratic participation. No one will wield a machete on our wrists, take our jobs or threaten our families based on how we’ve cast our ballot. We have no marauding bands of vigilantes intent on taking out the opposition. Furthermore, we’ve made the ballot box more accessible, more convenient and less restricted than almost any other nation, culture or society now or in the past. You pull up to the fire station, church, library or city hall in your minivan, you walk in, fill in a few forms, walk to the voting booth and cast a ballot. Simple. Unrestrained. Unhindered. Almost effortless.

But that’s not all. There are roughly 25 items on this year’s ballot in Ames. In the great and storied history of our republic, more than 1.3 million men and women have given their lives for the defense of our freedoms and ideals. That’s 52,000 brave men and women for each item on that ballot. 52,000. That’s nearly the death toll of the Vietnam War, given in blood for each item on a ballot handed out here, in Ames, today. With Veterans’ Day just a week away, what more fitting and momentous tribute could there be than to exercise that right that those thousands of valiant and honored dead gave, as Lincoln put it, “the last full measure of devotion,” to secure?

The argument could rage for days over whether we, as Americans, are obligated to vote, or whether we simply have the right to do so, and not the obligation. Unlike Australia, Belgium, Congo, Singapore and many others, and unlike the ancient Athenians, we Americans have no law compelling us to do so, and no legal ramifications if we choose not to exercise our right. We do, however, have a responsibility to each other, to ourselves, and a responsibility to our systems and institutions of government. The words of the Founding Fathers, the eloquence of the framers of the Constitution, the weight of 132 years of this experiment called “America” and the blood that has watered Thomas Jefferson’s proverbial “tree of liberty” all implore us to our calling as Americans in a way that no PIRG volunteer with a clipboard ever could.

So go, be an American. Vote. Why? Because you, I — we — can.

— Ryan Frederick is a senior in management from Orient