Voting

This evening I voted early. In North Carolina, early voting began in some polling locations on October 20. One of those voting sites is less than 1/4 mile from our house. It was a beautiful Fall afternoon today. My wife had already voted this morning, and so I thought it was high time for me to do so as well.

I waited in line for an hour. The line was surprisingly quiet, like folks knew how important their action was going to be. I realized then that it was pretty amazing what we were all doing: exercising our right to elect our government leaders.

I have always loved voting. I remember a time when I was 18 or 19, and went to my former junior high school to vote in a primary. The polls closed at 7pm and I must have arrived at 7:01; I couldn’t have been more than one or two minutes late. I was so angry that the officials wouldn’t let me vote. How dare they?! But they were right; as much as I hated it, they were right. I swore to myself I’d never let that happen again.

So for this election in 2016, we voted early. Something else occurred to me when I exited the building: I had just voted not only for our leaders, but also for our future.