by hatfield13

Votes and Voices – An Invitation

As writers, we value individual voices, and this Tuesday, all of us — writer and non-writers alike — have a powerful opportunity to show that our voices matter. 

I’ve been an eligible voter for 20 years now, and this will be my sixth Presidential election. I’ve never been more excited to cast my vote, and I’m excited that on this coming Election Day, America will likely see one of its biggest voter turnouts in memory. 

I’m excited for people who will be voting for President for the first time on Tuesday —  people like my friend Stephanie, getting her master’s degree to be a librarian right now.  I’m excited for the thousands of older people voting for the first time,  already lining up in states like Florida and Georgia, because they believe this year, their voices are important.  They’re right.

On Tuesday morning, I’ll be stopping to vote during my morning run.  My polling place is actually a tiny little building — a one-room community center in our neighborhood park. 

To celebrate Election Day, I’ll post a photograph of myself on my way in to vote, and I invite you to do the same on your blog on Tuesday.  I’ll post a round-up of links here, so please drop me a note or comment if you plan to participate, and I’ll be sure to include you in my VOTES AND VOICES celebration.

Just three more days to go…

12 Replies on “Votes and Voices – An Invitation”

  2. What a great post — and a fabulous idea!

    I’d post a picture, too, but I sent in my ballot over a week ago. Maybe you could include a list of people who voted by mail?

  9. I’ll let you know if I’m able to do this.

    Btw, many polling places have prohibitions on cameras within a certain distance of the building. It always makes me wonder how they manage to capture those shots of the candidates voting for themselves …

    Rest assured that whether I take a picture or not, I will be voting on Tuesday!

  10. Mock Election

    Hey Ms. Messner it’s me again! I thought I’d share with you that because all of the students at our school are younger than 18 we will hold a mock election. It will work just like a real election; each class is a state. Each class one at a time will go to the polls and each class will have Electors based on the number of students for the Electoral College. It’s really funny because in our first period class on Thursday we were joking around (My 1st period is journalism and we just ended our projects and will be putting our first paper out on the 5th of November) and so we were practicing talking like the candidates one of my friends got picked as the best McCain and went up to our classes little speech podium-thing and did some U.S. History jokes and I got voted best Obama voice and went up and did my little speech and at the end we did the little “I am Barack Obama and I approve this message” bit. It was fun. Just thought I’d share.

  11. I’m in – I’ll have my son take it! He was hoping to come vote with me so he could pull the lever for Obama – until I told him we now have the new optical scanner machines and they won’t let kids fill in the the paper ballots or feed them into the scanner. So all he can do is watch me cast this historic vote. But he wants to be there anyway, bless him.

    And in the next Presidential election, he’ll be a voter himself!