The right to vote is part of a long, continuing struggle for a better democracy. Let’s remember that in the weeks ahead.

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I sighed as I started going through my voters pamphlet. It’s thick with initiatives, advisory votes and contests that I’m not up to speed on.

Sure, I’ve read something about most of them over the past few months, but it didn’t always stick. What has stuck this election cycle has also stunk, and that’s the presidential campaign. I’ll be glad when that’s over, but I’m also glad I get to vote, not just in that race, but on all other races and issues that will shape our lives going forward.

I had to give myself a booster shot of voting history to raise my appreciation for the right that makes democracy work. I called Steven Mintz, an acclaimed historian and professor at the University of Texas.

“We often think the United States was born democratic,” he said, “but it’s not true.” The truth is that ongoing struggle continues to build democracy here.

I’d read an article Mintz wrote for the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, “Winning the Vote: A History of Voting Rights.” It traces the history of voting from the colonial period to the present.

Colonial leaders believed only people with a stake in society should vote, and for them that meant people who owned property or paid a certain amount of taxes. It also helped to be white, Protestant and male.

The Revolution made taxation without representation an issue, so afterward some states replaced property ownership with taxpaying requirements. Also by 1790, Catholics and Jews could vote in all states, and free black people could in six states.

States didn’t march uninterrupted toward greater democracy. New Jersey had allowed property-owning women to vote, but took that right back in 1807.

Some states made it difficult for foreign-born residents to vote, but others allowed even new immigrants to vote, as long as they said they intended to become citizens.

Voting rights for black Americans have been contentious from the start and have moved forward at times only to be pushed back. In early America, many states explicitly made it illegal for black people to vote.

The Reconstruction Act of 1867 allowed black men to vote in former Confederate states, but that was short-lived. Laws changed and hundreds of black people were killed to prevent them from voting. The number of black voters plummeted across the South and remained low until passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Women were denied the vote, except in states where they could vote in local elections. In 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteed women the right to vote. (Washington had changed its constitution to allow women to vote in 1910.)

Not all Native Americans were granted citizenship until passage of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, but some states still barred them from voting until the 1965 Act said they had the same right to vote as other citizens.

Americans were beaten, jailed and even killed trying to secure voting rights, but a 2013 court ruling weakened the 1965 act, and citizens are still fighting for their full right to vote.

At the same time, Mintz said, the United States is unique among developed democracies in how few people actually vote — just over 50 percent in a presidential election.

In years when there isn’t a presidential race, the percentage of voters who actually vote takes a dive. But off-year ballots often include issues that are of great local importance, such as bond measures, and sometimes they are decided by the few people who have a special interest in them.

The political parties used to have big door-to-door, get-out-the-vote campaigns, and when unions were bigger, they delivered lots of votes. Also voting itself has changed.

Mintz said he’s nostalgic for voting as a civic event. Voting in person with neighbors made people feel part of a community and maybe even made the process more trustworthy because you saw it with your own eyes.

Still, he said, it’s good that more mail-voting, early-voting and electronic-voting make it easier for more people to participate.

We also talked about those down-ballot issues and races. Most of the attention goes to the big races. He said that, like probably most people, he’s left wondering who some of the candidates are. “Not a good way to run a democracy,” he said.

No. It’s far from a perfect system, but being aware of the cost of getting here, doing what I need to do to vote intelligently doesn’t seem so hard. I’m ready to do my research.

No more sighs.