North Carolina has early voting, which I think is fabulous! Over the last couple of weeks, I've seen numerous "I Voted Today" stickers on folks at the grocery store, at school, and on most of my friends. In conversation after conversation, my friends have talked about feeling particularly emotional at the polls while casting their vote in this monumental election. I went on Friday, curious to see if I would feel the same.
I chose to make downtown Durham my polling place, since that was where I cast my primary vote. For those of you that are not familiar with Durham's demographics, it has a large and active African-American population. Most of the volunteers and voters at the downtown poll were part of this community. The line was relatively short- I would say I only waited 10 minutes or so- but as I approached the interior of the building, I kept hearing cheering. As I neared the entrance, I realized that the volunteer manning the machine accepting the ballots was asking each voter if it was their first time voting. If the person answered "yes", all of the volunteers would cheer loudly. As I stood in line in that building, several first time voters passed through with the accompanying cheers and I started to feel that well of emotion that my friends had talked about.
Then there were two first-timers in a row that sent me right over the edge. The first, a young African-American man, likely no more than 18 or 19 years old, who was dressed in a huge oversized puffy jacket, sagging pants, and a sideways baseball cap very proudly placed his ballot in the machine and swaggered out of the building. The very next voter was an elderly African-American man. He was small and hunched, and clearly wearing his very best. When asked if it was his first time voting, he slowly looked up at the volunteer, shakingly handed the ballot to him, and said in a whisper, "In all my 80-odd years, this is the first time I've ever been able to vote." I can't even write about it without choking up.
In my opinion, this epitomizes the miracle of the Obama campaign. Whether these individuals voted for him or not, the effort put forth by his campaign to make sure that people were registered and able to vote has been tremendous. He has made this election something that a young man, an old man, and myself have in common and asked us to consider how else we might be alike.
The right to vote has been so
hard-earned by so many throughout history. Beginning with a small group of men in 1776 deciding that, although there was no other democracy in the world, no one should be governed without representation and power, through suffragists imprisoned and refusing food until women were enfranchised in 1920, to civil rights workers in the 60s threatened and harmed in order to make the Fifteenth Ammendment a reality for African Americans. Still, just over 50% of registered voters actually cast their vote. (For an interesting Wikepedia article on how we compare with other nations and reasons for low turnout, click
here) Tomorrow is election day...PLEASE get out there and appreciate the gift and privilege that the right to vote really is!
A few places I've spotted a desire for change...
