I must confess, I’ve never had an interest in voting. I lost faith in our system after Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000 yet did not reach the White House because of this elite system we call the electoral college. Today, however, I cannot wait for Nov. 4 so I can cast my ballot for the future of our country. This excitement for voting came to me while I was sucking what little oxygen there was at 15,000 feet in the Tibetan Himalayas, listening to Tibetans speak of their hardships and the oppression that they have faced almost every day for most of their lives.

Tibet is controlled by China. The politics, economy, religion, and domestic issues are engineered in a way which leaves many Tibetans behind.  In recent years, a railway was built to connect Tibet with ‘‘mainland’’ China allowing many Chinese citizens to take the jobs of countless Tibetans. Politically, Tibetans have no opportunity to vote in their own country. 

His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, forced to flee his own country nearly five decades ago, has helped construct the Tibetan Government in Exile in Dharamsala, India. I was able to visit this mountainside town in Northern India in the fall of 2007. This government gives Tibetans who live in exile the opportunity to vote—something they can never get in China-controlled Tibet. Today it seems that amidst the negative ad campaigns and attacks between the front runners for president, we as Americans can easily forget how important our right to vote is. 
       
I am voting for Tibetans. I am not voting for a ‘‘maverick’’ or an ‘‘agent of change.’’  When I vote I will be thinking of the millions of Tibetans, some of whom are a part of our community in Vermont.  I will be voting for them, because they cannot vote.  We can all think people all over the world who do not have this right. 

I choose the Tibetans because I hiked alongside them in the Himalayas, studied with them in monasteries, and drank tea with them in tea houses in northern India.  All the while, I was witness to an oppression beyond imagination.  The religious persecution of the faithful, the economic oppression of the poor, and the violation of countless human rights over the course of the last five decades. Come Nov. 4, I am voting for the Tibetans who have no voice. 

Who are you going to vote for?