Your vote is your voice

The day I turned 18 I registered to vote. I went after school to city hall in Joseph, Oregon, with my best friend, Sandy, and we both registered. She had turned 18 two months earlier. Only 7 years had passed since the voting age had been lowered thanks to the 26^th Amendment and I was not going to miss using this right. 

When I was stationed overseas my ballot signature had to be witnessed, I had a favorite Lieutenant and I’d find him for the task. You’re a good citizen he’d say, but I knew he didn’t see many so eager. When my son was a baby, I found the polling place (a garage in a neighborhood near our apartment) and while he sat in his stroller I voted. When I was pregnant with my daughter, I stood in line three hours to register to vote in Florida, having nearly missed the deadline. A few weeks later on election night she was in an infant carrier as I again joined a long line and cast my ballot. Wonderful to think that sixteen years later we all celebrated as Barack Obama was elected. 

Today we voted. The first day of early voting in our town. We cast a vote for decency and light; for truth and science, for a blissful return to mediocrity. Early voting in Illinois began September 24^th, but we have waited until this polling place opened. Over the years we have voted in person, early and on election day, we’ve voted absentee and we’ve voted by mail. Today was nothing special aside from the fact we carried our own pens, wore masks and had to ask the people behind us in line to please observe the six-foot rule.

There was a line, we had an hour’s wait from the time we arrived until we got into the building and got to a station. It was cold and windy outside and my light sweater wasn’t enough but, my Obama t-shirt gave me super power. And even the sad message on a car in the parking lot was just that sad and odd and tone deaf. 8645 to save the nation.