This week’s civics column is going to be personal. I hope that’s alright with you, our amazing SCOOP readers and subscribers. I want to share my election day experience with you.
For me, it started at 7:30 am on May 16, when I arrived with my twenty-three-year-old
granddaughter at the Dorothy Emmanuel Recreation Center in the mighty fiftieth Ward in
Mount Airy. She has been voting since she was eighteen, but I would definitely still call her a new and inexperienced voter. She’s learning. Going together was just a wonderful thing, and this isn’t the first time of course. I can go back to when Barak Obama was running for office for the first time for President in 2007. I took both my grandchildren with me and into the booth (with me) when I voted. It was just that much of a historic moment to me.
This will be the first time that my granddaughter and I went to the polling place together, and she is a registered voter. I am always happy and jubilant on election day and sort of dance my way into the voting area because I love to vote. If I never feel powerful on any other days of the year, when it’s the Primary Election and the General Election, somehow, I feel powerful. I feel like my vote, added to other votes of like-minded people, can make a difference in bringing qualified candidates into office. I don’t know if my granddaughter felt a little embarrassed because her grandmom was dancing at the polls and talking to strangers and rejecting poll workers of candidates I don’t give a hoot for–she hung in there with me. She didn’t pretend that she wasn’t with me. My grandchild still claimed me.
The one thing I forgot to do, which I never forget, was to ask what number of voter I was having arrived at 7:30 am. I was so busy dancing and having fun that I forgot to ask, what number was I? All along this campaign cycle, political pundits and know-it-alls have been saying that the Tuesday, May 16, Primary Election was going to be a low voter turnout election, and darn if they weren’t right.
I dropped the granddaughter off (back at home) so she could get to work, and then I went to pick up my daughter and eighteen-year-old grandson–so I could witness him voting for the first time in the 22nd Ward. Keep in mind, I was still dancing. When my daughter and I
proudly informed the election workers at the table that this was my grandson’s first time voting, every one of them cheered for him. It was the most beautiful thing. And in return, that young man had the biggest grin on his face. OMG.
Next, it was time for him to go into the booth, and thankfully, the election workers allowed me to go in with him. I already had a prepared list of candidates I wanted all my family members to vote for, and since I’m “Big Mamma” in my immediate family (everybody else is dead), usually what I say goes for any family members under twentyfive. So yes, I’m an influencer amongst my family at least. I tell them who I think the best candidates are, and, more often than not, they listen.
Let me take a minute to applaud the Philadelphia City Commissioners. The new voting machines are wonderful, so twentyfirst century, y’all go ahead with your bad selves. The new machines are impressive and seem to be very efficient. I had no problem…
Thank you for reading Thera Martin’s article on scoopnewsusa.com. For more on “Voting can be a Family Affair”, please subscribe to SCOOP USA Media. Print subscriptions are $75 and online subscriptions (Print, Digital, and VIZION) are $90. (52 weeks / 1 year).
