Burning to Vote
It had only been 15 minutes of waiting in line, but the strong southern sun was penetrating the back of my black tee. Kids left their parents' side and sat in the shade, while others let their masks dangle on their ears and used the heat as an excuse.
Any time my voting buddy and I tried to make more space in the line, we were sized up and down by anti-maskers. I wanted to joke to my friend that even though wearing political paraphernalia when voting is prohibited, the use of masks made it easy to guess their political affiliation. But I remembered the message she got from her dad, telling us to keep quiet about who we were voting for considering how conservitive District 9 could get.
In the middle of waiting, a man with a MAGA hat approached us and tried to give us a pamphlet of all the Republicans on the ballot. My friend was too polite to decline and as we scanned through the list together, I pointed out all the platforms that had scared me the most when I was researching candidates.
“He’s in support of building the wall.”
“That judge doesn’t believe in systemic racism and said people are just too distrustful.”
“He has zero experience in office AND he’s faced stalking and assault charges.”
By minute 40 of waiting in line, the woman behind us began to joke on the phone that she wished she could just vote republican all the way down the ballot and leave, finding all the waiting to be a nuisance.
Hearing a woman complain about waiting for 45 minutes to vote made me realize that there are women who believe they are the daughters of witches they couldn’t burn, and then there are the women who are still burning. I am one of the women who was left behind, crawled through hell to get to this line, and who now feels the burden of this election on my shoulders.
Before the 2016 election, I saw my mom save hundreds of dollars to apply for citizenship and then spent every free moment she had studying for the exam. She did all that work to go to the polls on November 3rd and vote against Trump. However, some women’s hardest challenge that year was finding the time to get to the polls and counteract her vote.
After the result of the 2016 election, when the popular vote didn’t feel like it mattered, I understand not feeling compelled to care about voting. I understand feeling like a single vote won’t make the difference. I even understand dissociating from the importance of voting when it seems like those with the most privilege are spouting off that it will solve everything. I understand that to those with less privilege, voting feels like a small action that is only going to contribute to a different version of systemic oppression.
Voting in the election won’t fix the system. It won’t fix all the problems we were fighting against this summer and it won’t be a reset button of the last 4 years, or moreover our structural issues. However, voting for a senator, representative and governor hold the same weight, if not more, than voting for a president. If we want to see changes that will change our everyday lives, we need to care about the other names on the ballot. In cases like the one of Breonna Taylor, a state’s attorney general (an elected official) is a deciding factor for indicting police officers. Our first step should be to make sure we never see another case like Breonna Taylors. Our second should be to make sure that we elect people who are honestly dedicated to bringing justice to those officers.
Turning your ballot in, even with blank spaces, can help our future. Afterwards, we can continue to fight our systemic issues- but we can’t dismantle it while detaching ourselves into an ambivalence for voting. We can simultaneously work to remake the system while still participating in the current one we have, in order to buy us more time. This election is not going to save us, it's not going to be a reset button for all the issues people have been fighting for. But this election could be the deciding factor between a wind that could calm our country’s burning fires, or a gasoline that will feed the engulfing flames.