Americans, don't be hypocritical: get out and vote

Dear American family and friends,

Firstly, I want you to know I love America. That's a sentiment you won't hear from many of my fellow Australians. But like a younger sibling living in the shadow of a cocky firstborn,  there is more love than hate between our nations though the relationship is complex. When I left your shores seven years ago, I'd spent nearly a quarter of my life there; a decade in a comfortable corner of California, and in so many ways, San Francisco is  my spiritual home. It's where I did all the grown up things in life: birth, death and marriage. But I never got to vote.

To be fair I chose not to. I was on my way to becoming a US citizen when my husband died, then instead of three years I had to wait five years to be eligible and by then I started to wonder, other than voting, what the benefits would be? It was only in the year of my son's birth, 2002, that dual citizenship between our two nations became possible. I chose not to pursue US citizenship because I would have had to give up my right to enter Australian Parliament (though given the lack of due diligence in both Senator Bob Day and Rod Culleton's case – who knows if the Australian Electoral Commission would have noticed.) Not that I'm planning on entering politics right now but you never know.

So it pains me to hear, when I speak to those of you in our old hometown of Petaluma, of your plans not to vote on Tuesday.  Admittedly many of you were very involved in the campaign to elect Bernie Sanders and are now disappointed at the remaining candidates. But that's no excuse not to flex your democratic muscle. Just because you find none of the candidates particularly appealing doesn't mean you should stay away from the polling booths.

If as a nation, you are so eager to defend your democracy you invade nations – Vietnam, Iraq, Panama – and sever ties with others such as Cuba because they refuse to have the popular vote, surely you need to show the rest of the "free" world you're prepared to have your say about who is your leader. If you don't you can hardly complain. Or you end up with a Brexit situation – a complacency that doesn't endear you to the rest of us in democracies who have followed you into battle time and time again.

And besides, you have one of the most participatory democracies on the planet – why wouldn't you want to join in the fun? In California alone on the ballot you get to have your say on who you want to represent you – from the Senate to the school board – as well as a vast array of propositions. Take for example proposition 60, which mandates condom use in pornographic films in order to curb the high rate of sexually transmitted diseases particularly in the San Fernadino valley in Southern California where the bulk of adult films are made. There is also prop 62 which would abolish the death penalty, and prop 66 which would speed up the execution process. If both pass, the one with the most votes supersedes the other (no, the 747 inmates on death row can't vote – but many are divided on it.) You get to vote on the banning of supermarket plastic bags and (an old favourite that's appeared before) the recreational use of cannabis for those over 21. When I lived there, the state voted to allow embryonic stem cell research – despite a federal ban on it in the Bush years.

Here in our state of NSW, we don't get a say on the details of our democracy like you do, instead our NSW Premier seems to be deciding a lot of things himself based on cabinet-in-confidence documents we don't even get to see. 

I understand voting can be more time consuming in the US than just ticking the boxes like we do. 

My America is the one beyond the beltway, not the corridors of power in Washington DC, but the corridors of my son's old school and my former workplaces. I understand there is not the optimism there was eight years ago, when Barack Obama was elected and my son's first-grade class got to watch democracy in action.

One of his proudest possessions, now framed in his bedroom, is a letter we received from Obama – complete with Presidential seal and signature – responding to a story I wrote on how inspiring it was to see a black man enter the White House. My son wanted the Obama daughters to know that we brought their daily dinner time ritual of listing the roses and thorns of the day (the good and the bad things) with us back to Australia.

Obama promised to read 20 letters a day from Americans, and I'm asking you to read this one letter from me – a non-citizen taxpayer. There are bad things about your democracy, but the good thing is you get to vote. 

Helen Pitt is a Fairfax Media journalist.