My first vote was in the multigenerational Butler Country Store, converted for the day to a voting precinct. I was proud to become a part of the process. In the next few years whether the election was national for President or the equally important county vote for the local sheriff, our family became precinct workers, counting the paper ballot votes at the end of the day before taking them in to add to the Pontotoc County total. Paper and pen were used all the way while acknowledging secret ballot privacy and security as the standard. When the outcome was especially important to us, we stayed in town after our midnight run with the Hoyle Precinct ballots until others came in from the rest of the county so we could know the result.
Over the years, things have changed. I remember nervousness the first time I voted by machine wondering if I would get it right, since I am nonmechanical, and then if the vote would really take once I pulled the lever. We sent absentee ballots from France, Belgium, and West Germany, taking care that we sent them on time. I don’t believe I have ever missed the opportunity to vote.
This year voting takes on a new importance with something popping up on my phone, my Facebook page, and in the mail every time I turn around suggesting that I get with the program and go vote. The images range from Wendell Minor’s beautiful Americana barn painting to stickers and instructions. My pictures capture a few of many. I keep wanting to say, “I did already!” – even in Mississippi, which does a very poor job of making accommodations for early voting. Okay, in the interest of being accurate, by many accounts it does the worst job in the nation. I have qualified by age to vote ahead and have already mailed my ballot. I don’t have to go far on Facebook to know that I have friends who will vote differently from each other and from me. I have family that will do the same. That’s the difference in a democracy and a dictatorship.
While I hate the polarization we have come to as a nation, the positive outcome I see is that people are noticing that their one vote is important and are going to great lengths to cast it. This morning’s news had an account of a women in labor who insisted that she had to vote before that baby came. Voting is both privilege and obligation. So get out there and cast your vote! And if you can say it honestly, feel free to tell me, “I did already!”
