I just got back from voting in today’s Texas Primary. If my calculations are correct, today marks the eighth time I have voted in some sort of election since I voted for the first time in the 1992 presidential election. I have voted in every presidential election since then, one mid-term election, two special elections, and now a primary.
Given that I am originally from Iowa and that is where I voted the first two times I voted in presidential elections, you might wonder if I have ever participated in that state’s caucus. Unfortunately, in 1992 I didn’t turn 18 until about five months after the caucuses were over, so I didn’t have a chance then. I am not sure why I didn’t attend the caucus in 1996, but I would guess that in addition to not being overly interested in the political process, since I was registered as a Democrat and Bill Clinton ran unopposed in the Democratic caucus that year I didn’t feel that it was necessary to attend.
2006 was the first time that I had ever voted in a mid-term election and it just so happened that I was living in Iowa again. In the run up to that election I thought about the mid-term elections that have happened since I was old enough to vote and wondered why I never voted in any of them. My excuse was, and I actually think that it does have some merit, that I have moved around a lot since 1992 and never felt qualified to vote in elections for representatives or congresspeople in states in which I didn’t really feel like a true resident. Sure I could have gone to the polls and voted for people I didn’t know that stood for issues that I didn’t think meant much to me, but I felt that it was better to abstain from voting rather than to cast a ballot as an uninformed citizen.
Nevertheless, although I had just returned from a four-year stint living overseas in the fall of 2006, I felt more qualified to vote in a mid-term election than I ever had up to that time. Living overseas had actually sparked an interest in the American political landscape that I had never had before and I had discovered that while mid-term elections may have certain foundations in state politics, they contribute to the big picture just as much as presidential elections do… if not more so. I was still a long way from being “political,” but I saw myself as an informed American who wanted to voice an opinion, so I did.
These days I try to keep up with the issues that affect me not only as an American citizen, but as a global citizen as well so that I can live my life as an informed individual, but overall, I must admit that American politicians have the power to make me tremendously apathetic.
Nevertheless, it is my hope that each time I exercise my right to vote it will serve to help shift things just a little bit and make this country a better place in which to live in the long run.