As the U.S. presidential election day approaches on Tuesday, November 3, there is the idea the (f)act of voting is a tool, but we need to ask for what? Voting presents us—or is presented to us—as a quintessential right, safeguarded by the blood of fallen troops and shrouded in mythos of liberty and justice for all… whom matter. Whether we accept or reject this presentation, we must admit voting as a performative act or a tool through which to direct action needs to be framed in history. “The great force of history,” James Baldwin reminds us, “comes from the fact that we carry it within us,” and that “history is literally present in all that we do.” But what has been carried into the present under the guise of voting and, through voting, what do we keep ever-present? We start where history nudges us to look—ancient Rome. The socio-political and economic structures regulating U.S. society, and around a globe molested by western European violence, are plagiarized forms of Roman law and institutions. Their story is a mirror to us.