The photograph of Anselm Weber, O.F.M. voting in the 1906 Arizona elections says much about how voting has changed, and perhaps just as importantly, how much things have not changed since that Territorial election day some one hundred and fourteen years ago. 
     First among the changes, Anselm was casting his paper ballot in a territorial election.  U.S. citizens living in the Territory of Arizona would not have been eligible to vote in national elections.   The ballot in Anselm’s hand is not a ballot for President of the United States or a Representative to Congress.  (Also, 1906 was not a presidential election year.)  Nor did United States citizens popularly elect Senators until 1918.  Before 1918 they were elected by state legislators.  Notice as well that Anselm voted with a paper ballot, meaning that eventually Anselm’s vote and every other vote would have been counted by hand, sometimes taking days to get the results of an election, since results had to go by horseback or railroad to the capital and be added together there.  We have had to wait a long time for election results many times in the past, realizing that slow accurate results were more important than fast inaccurate results. 
      Another change from 1906, there are no women and no Navajo in the picture.  Women got the vote in 1920 by Constitutional Amendment.  Congress did not give Native Americans the right to vote until 1924, but still the States of Arizona and New Mexico did not allow Native Americans to vote until 1948, after the Navajo Code Talkers and many other Native Americans had served valiantly in World War II.  The young man standing next to Anselm is probably the youngest of the Day brothers, sons of the family that owned a trading post near St. Michaels.  That family, and especially the “Day boys,” who grew up bilingually with Navajo playmates from a very young age, helped the early friars learn the Navajo language.  In exchange the friars tutored the Day boys in “American” subjects such as science and history.  This young man does not appear to be twenty-one years old, so he could not have voted in 1906.  In 1970, Congress lowered the voting age to eighteen, following the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which did much to extend the vote to Black Americans.  These extensions of voting rights and the use of technology to tabulate voting results are all signs of progress reflecting our desire that voting be seen as a right and duty of all citizens of the United States, rather than the privilege of a few.
     But voting is still far from universal among us.  Earlier this month, I helped a friend of mine since my days at Holy Family get an absentee ballot for our upcoming election.  Since she moved into a nursing home in 2014, she has missed voting for six years, but wants to be sure to vote this year.  She was still on the voting roll, but with the wrong address.  Once I talked with a human being, rather than a computer, in the county clerk’s office, it was relatively simple to request that she be sent a change of address form so that she could apply for an absentee ballot.  Her situation is one of many where voting means overcoming obstacles just as intimidating to would-be voters as getting up a flight of stairs would have been for her in her wheelchair.  But the struggles and difficulties some have to overcome to vote should remind us all of the seriousness with which we must take our responsibility of exercising our right to vote. 
      We must recognize the profound importance of each and every vote cast – including not only our own votes, but also the votes cast by those over whom we exert some influence, whether a few friends or family members with whom we have private conversations or many people who hear or read our public comments.  As in the photograph, others were watching and learning from what the friar Anselm Weber was doing.  We must speak, act, and vote with great care.
      The issue most often discussed this year in Catholic media with regard to voting for particular candidates has been abortion – whether a candidate favors women retaining the legal right to abortion, or whether a candidate or party favors a change in the laws or in the interpretation of the Constitution which would once again make abortion illegal, even though history has repeatedly shown us one single act, even forbidding abortion by law,  rather than addressing the many underlying causes of abortion, will not put an end to this evil.
      We would do well to remember what Pope Benedict XVI wrote while still the head of the Vatican Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith in a memorandum entitled “Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles”:  
       A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy   
       to present himself [or herself] for Holy Communion, if he [or she] were to
      deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s
       permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does
       not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia but
       votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote
       material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of
        proportionate reasons.
In other words, abortion, which is an unspeakable evil in that it is the taking of the most innocent of human lives, must always be considered a most serious sin, but the mere fact that a candidate would permit the laws allowing abortion to remain cannot be considered alone to determine whether good Catholics can vote for that candidate and remain good Catholics.  When there are proportionate – in other words equally or even more serious – reasons to vote for such a candidate over a candidate proclaiming opposition to legal abortion, a good Catholic must follow his or her conscience.  The well-formed conscience seeking to do its best in making the choices necessary to navigate through all of the gray areas of life has long been proclaimed by the Church as the highest individual moral authority.   
      A well-formed Catholic conscience must take into account not only the Church’s teachings on the sanctity of life from conception to natural death, but also the Church’s teachings with regard to many other issues.  Taking a look at the issues listed by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in the latest version of their guide to “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” reminds us that we are called to inform our conscience on many matters, not just one.  We are not to take the lazy way out of saying “I don’t care” about other issues and vote based only on one issue.  The Bishops’ document asks us to consider what we have done to inform our consciences about  the stance and actions of politicians and political parties concerning: Human Life including opposition to abortion and the death penalty, and Promoting Peace including expenditures on the military relative to expenditures for promoting world peace through communications and trade; Marriage and Family Life not only of our citizens but of families at our borders and around the world; Religious Freedom including respect for all faiths, and Preferential Option for the Poor and Economic Justice putting people before profits; Health Care which must be recognized as a human right for everyone; Migration which includes welcoming the stranger; Catholic Education not alone of children, but recognizing the responsibility of leaders to educate by actions in accord with Catholic values; Promoting Justice and Countering Violence which means that the instruments of civil order must be supported while at the same time never being used to subvert anyone’s rights; Combating Unjust Discrimination including discrimination based on long-standing racial prejudices; Care for our Common Home meaning that we are all responsible for the environment; Communications, Media, and Culture indicating that all those in leadership must help maintain civil discourse and uplift others by what they do and say, and Global Solidarity so as to recall that we are called to cooperate with those struggling for the good all around the world and not be focused on ourselves alone. 
      What we quickly see from the Bishop’s list is that probably no one party, no one candidate will ever be in complete accord with Catholic social and moral teaching.  We will always be choosing between imperfect candidates and imperfect parties, but we must do our best to choose wisely taking a whole range of issues into consideration.  Others are watching what we do and listening to what we say, just as they were in the picture of Anselm Weber voting.  Let us be careful to make our decisions and exercise our influence as a result of prayerful and thoughtful discernment, not seeing how fast we can draw our six gun and shoot from the hip at an easy target.