Tuesday after work, I headed to my polling place to vote. The polling place in my neighborhood is never really busy. It is plagued with by with the usual problems of a polling place in a low income neighborhood where people struggle to get to the polls because of jobs and transportation. Early mornings are busier than afternoons, but I’ve only ever had to wait in any kind of line during presidential elections. I want to see the polling place full. I want to stand in a line. It gives me hope to stand in the line at the polling place. This week, I walked right up to the election worker and got my ballot. When I got up to put my ballot in the voting machine, I was behind a young woman with three young children. I watched as the three little ones helped to place the ballot in the machine and then they all took stickers. As I stepped up for my turn, I heard the young woman say “Now, hold onto those and we will take a selfie when we get to the car.” When I got to my car, I looked over just in time to see the four of them proudly holding up their sticker while the young mom took the picture.
Then I cried all the way home.
I know I’ve told this hundreds of times. Change happens in increments and the biggest impacts happen locally. There were five things on the ballot this week: two education board members, a bond to improve KCMO schools, keeping 3.5 acres of park land, and a tax to build a new jail. Not a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but things that will have a big impact on my community. I know I’ve talked about my parents taking me with them to the polls every time the polls were open many times here and how this imbedded the importance of voting every time. They both taught me this was a way to show up for my community even if it there is only one thing on the ballot. I can still remember how frustrated my parents would get whenever a school bond would come up on the ballot and it would fail to pass because not enough parents would even show up to vote. We lived in a town where the elderly outnumbered us and the elderly vote. I mean they vote. Even though I do not have children and the one that sometimes lives at my house does not attend KCMO schools, I’m always going to vote for something to improve the schools.
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. -Benjamin Franklin
I don’t know that young woman’s story. Her children ranged in age between maybe six and three. Maybe she has a partner to help or maybe she’s a single mom. I do know, just by seeing her car, that she probably lives paycheck to paycheck and barely so. Making time to vote is hard and she made a commitment to do so while wrangling three small children. Seeing her cast her ballot filled me with hope, something I’ve been pretty low on these days. I’m not only grateful for her sense of civic duty, but for the enthusiastic way she involved her children. Her lesson to them on voting is not just about civic duty but it also teaches community. Voting on small ballot issues has a great impact on our communities. Every time I get overwhelmed by the latest atrocity, I remind myself to put my head down and focus on my community where I can do the most good. I have one regret from my voting experience on Tuesday and that was not saying Thank you to this young woman’s face.
Where ever you are right now lady, Thank you.
Thank you Cindy, for telling us of this incident, and the reminder that if we don’t show up on each and every occasion we can to vote, we loose the right to complain about the issues