Voting to change

A friend's grandma in Ohio is voting for McCain because she and Grandpa have "always voted Republican". Her granddaughter, a young woman living on the edge of welfare, will do the same, for the same reason. There is no thinking. There is no attempt. They say that they "know nothing about politics". They rely on Fox.

You have the opportunity in this country to vote tomorrow to change, and to make, history.

I voted for the first time in South Africa, in 1994, in the first free election. The first election where black candidates were on the ballot. I had been eligible to vote in a previous election but did not exercise that right as the right was not granted to all South Africans and was consequently a wrong. I voted in 1994. I watched with millions of others as voting lines snaked for miles, as the people of South Africa voted for the first time in history, as a nation.

This is a different country. A proud, strong, scornful country, many of whose people have never known real necessity... Yet somehow this, tomorrow, starting at 6am, feels like the first free election most Americans have known.

The corruption and inhumanity that have led this country for the last 8 years, the billions of dollars poured into a self-perpetuating war without end, without an enemy, the glassy-eyed embrace of stupidity and ignorance - these things can come to an end. Not overnight. But starting next January when the new president of the United States is sworn in.

There is an extraordinary man in the running.

Vote for him. Because you can.