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'This time I'm voting'
May. 23rd, 2019 07:06 amThat is the slogan of this year's EU parliamentary elections, taking place in the UK today, and across Europe over the next four days, depending on when votes are normally held in that country. The slogan is obviously designed to encourage engagement in a vote where turnout is normally relatively low, but for me — a non-EU migrant to the UK who became a British (and therefore EU) citizen in May 2016 — it holds a particular personal resonance.
As an Australian, brought up in a country with compulsory voting, the idea that someone would not vote in any election where they had the right to do so* is utterly inconceivable. As a new British citizen who thought she would never get the chance to vote in such an election at all, I feel a huge mess of emotions about being able to do so.
As I say, I became a British citizen in May 2016. That was when the citizenship ceremony was held. But the passport — that document symbolising and granting my rights as an EU citizen, with 'European Union' written on its cover above 'United Kingdom' — arrived in the very early hours of 24th June, 2016, like a door closing. As such, my citizenship of the country in which I chose to make my home has from the very beginning been bound to Brexit in a way I've found extraordinarily distressing and painful.
The one bright spot amid all that political chaos and personal distress has been the tenacity with which my fellow remainers fought to keep that connection with the EU, and to continue to make the case for a worldview which is outward-looking, international, allowing people a multiplicity of identities, where living across borders is easy and normal. Though our efforts still may come to nothing, that we've been able to buy this amount of time is miraculous. It is thanks to those efforts that I, too, am able to say today that this time I'm voting.
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*Barring instances of voter intimidation or suppression, obviously.
As an Australian, brought up in a country with compulsory voting, the idea that someone would not vote in any election where they had the right to do so* is utterly inconceivable. As a new British citizen who thought she would never get the chance to vote in such an election at all, I feel a huge mess of emotions about being able to do so.
As I say, I became a British citizen in May 2016. That was when the citizenship ceremony was held. But the passport — that document symbolising and granting my rights as an EU citizen, with 'European Union' written on its cover above 'United Kingdom' — arrived in the very early hours of 24th June, 2016, like a door closing. As such, my citizenship of the country in which I chose to make my home has from the very beginning been bound to Brexit in a way I've found extraordinarily distressing and painful.
The one bright spot amid all that political chaos and personal distress has been the tenacity with which my fellow remainers fought to keep that connection with the EU, and to continue to make the case for a worldview which is outward-looking, international, allowing people a multiplicity of identities, where living across borders is easy and normal. Though our efforts still may come to nothing, that we've been able to buy this amount of time is miraculous. It is thanks to those efforts that I, too, am able to say today that this time I'm voting.
_____________
*Barring instances of voter intimidation or suppression, obviously.