The majority of Americans won’t vote in the Nov. 7 elections. This saddens us — and angers us.

Nov. 6 marks the 100-year anniversary of New York women gaining the right to vote. The passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, three years later, was the result of decades of work where progress was often tempered with setbacks. The seed was planted at 1848 convention in Seneca Falls, New York. The women who ran that convention were dead before the 19th Amendment was passed.

Women were jailed. Women were force-fed when they refused to eat. Women were beaten. Women were cast out by their friends and families. It was a hard-won right and should not be taken lightly.

We believe the best way for New Yorkers to celebrate the century mark is to vote on the very next day.

The civil rights movement for racial equality that followed three decades later was equally courageous and just as long in the making. As we pored over documents from the New York State Archives this week, for our story on the constitutional convention, we saw, written in a flawless hand, Article II of the state’s 1821 convention in which the vote was denied to any African-American man who did not meet stringent property qualifications.

Although the 15th Amendment of the United States Constitution, ratified in 1870, gave African-American men the right to vote, that wasn’t the reality. Passing the Voting Rights Act in 1965 did not mean, as Lyndon Johnson said at the time, that the battle would be over.

The struggle for equality by women, and blacks, and many others in this country continues to this day.

One important way to be engaged in democracy, to make a difference, is to vote. There’s no presidential election this year so fewer will turn out to vote. The Knight Foundation estimates that fewer than a third will vote in local elections.

But local elections affect day-to-day life in much more immediate ways than national elections. Will your town be developed in ways you approve of? Will your property taxes increase or decrease? Will your town share services or facilities with the county? Will your community offer affordable housing?

All these issues, and many more, will be decided, in part, by who is elected to local offices.

Over the years, we have covered several local elections that were tied or decided by just one or two votes. On a local scale, a single vote can make the difference between who wins and who loses.

The Altamont Enterprise does not endorse candidates. We believe your opinion, as a voter, matters as much as ours. Instead, we go to the effort to create profiles for every race in each town we cover — Guilderland, New Scotland, Berne, Knox, Westerlo, and Rensselaerville. We interview each candidate on a series of issues important to the place and to the post he or she is running in and for.

You can read what the candidates want to do and see how their views line up with your own. You can also read dozens and dozens of election letters to understand your neighbors’ views of the candidates and their opinions on the issues. Each letter is fact-checked, with an editor’s note at the bottom to explain any important background, discrepancies, or close personal or political relationships. Our letter writers are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.

Our opinion pages are a meeting ground, a place in our increasingly polarized society where readers can seek to understand views that may be different from their own.

All of the profiles and the letters are available on our website — www.AltamontEnterprise.com — so, if you missed the print version, or the newspaper went out with the trash or was used in the birdcage, you can still be an informed voter.

We take the same approach with the statewide issues you will be voting on, the most important being whether or not New York State will hold a constitutional convention. Read Sean Mulkerrin’s in-depth front-page story to see what groups are for the convention, what groups are against it — and why.

Then make up your own mind and vote.

One of the facts Mulkerrin uncovered is that, in 1997, the last time a constitutional convention went down to defeat, about 40 percent of the New Yorkers who voted in the election didn’t vote “yes” or “no” on holding a convention. Albany County did better than the statewide average. In our county, 96,095 ballots were cast in the 1967 election but 22 percent didn’t vote one way or the other on the constitutional convention.

That’s still thousands and thousands of citizens among those committed enough to show up at the polls who neglected to exercise their right to vote. Albany County currently has 195,707 registered voters. As of the 2010 census, the county’s population was over 304,000.

Another fact Mulkerrin reports: As of Oct. 6, close to half of the New Yorkers polled said they had  heard “nothing” about the vote to hold a constitutional convention, and almost another quarter said that they had heard “not very much.”

We urge our readers to pay attention.

We urge our readers further to remember New York’s first constitutional convention was held in 1776 and 1777 when New Yorkers were dying — literally dying — for independence. What those early New Yorkers fought for well over two centuries ago is valuable: Our state constitution sets out our basic rights as citizens and defines the structure that govern us.

Today, as you are reading this, there are people in other parts of the world who are dying or being brutalized or tortured as they fight to have a democracy, as they fight for the right to vote, to govern themselves. We spoke recently to a feminist from Syria, Nawal Yazji, representing women’s rights for the first time ever in peace negotiations among world powers.

“In democracy,” she said, “you can be free to at least fight for your rights.”

So, of course, we urge every one of our readers to go to the polls. But more: Be an informed voter; read about the candidates and issues. And then cast your ballot.

The right to vote, to have citizens shape their own government, is hard won. We must honor and cherish that right, not squander and neglect it.