Notes from a First-Time Voter 👋🏼
Do I feel a sense of civic pride? I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t have any strong feelings yesterday, having cast a Town Meeting vote for the first time in my life. Barre City’s March Town Meeting only votes on school-related issues. This year, all candidates were running unopposed. I voted in favor of the new Career Center, the budget, and (I think), some kind of debt expenditure. 🤷🏻♀️
I didn’t know what to expect – we entered the Barre Aud and ran into a neighbor who introduced us to her new baby. The building was fairly empty, which was surprising. But given that there were no contests, it made sense. My first time casting a ballot would be a breeze.
After I completed my ballots, I carried them over to the station where they were inputted into large machines– one per sheet. They looked like androids scavenged by Jawas. Anyways, my ballots fed into the machines and were approved. Dan introduced me around to the poll workers as a first-time voter. I think he was more proud about it than I was.
Settling down in Central Vermont
The most notable thing about yesterday was that this marked 20 years in Central Vermont for us. We moved here in 2007 from Brattleboro. Dan had taken a job as a reporter for the Vermont Press Bureau and I had two weeks to figure out how to move us up there (the job only gave him 2 weeks at a hotel, after that he was on his own). He started the week of the Valentines Day blizzard and reported coming back with wet, soggy shoes.
There weren’t many apartments, but I found a couple on Craigslist that Dan would visit and send notes back about. I had saved enough from my bookstore gig to put a security deposit down on one within walking distance to downtown and I set to packing us up. His parents helped us drive the U-Haul truck full of our things. When we arrived, the landlords in the duplex next door were having a baby-–at least the husband was trying to get to his wife who was at the hospital in labor as we pulled up.
Citizenship
When I got naturalized, I had received congratulations with the comment that I’d already done so much to contribute to society that perhaps by another measure, I should have been conferred citizenship long ago. I get the sentiment, though I bristle at the thought that one is expected to earn one’s way by being “good”, as that is a faulty and vague measure.
Casting my vote is a duty, however I feel about it. Just like contributions to the coin drop fundraisers or buying Girl Scout cookies or pushing the neighbor out of the snowbank by the house. It’s a participation cost.
I used to be more politically fired up when I was young. I was in high school when Bernie Sanders ran for Congress. My friends and their parents campaigned for him. I remember the red bumper sticker and that he was a “socialist”.
In high school, my cohort was fascinated with the guerillas of the Cuban rebellion, which fueled our romantic fantasies of life on the scruffy margin. I wrote letters at the monthly Amnesty International meetings to support political prisoners. My classmates walked out in a demonstration against the first Iraq war.
I read the USA Today life section every day during the silent reading period, sharing it with the guy next to me, a brooding metalhead with dark eyes and soft lashes. I skipped taking Western Civ like my classmates, both out of laziness and an objection to a curriculum that ignored Eastern Civ. I read every newspaper and magazine I got my hands on. I had enough trivia to best better educated friends in any quiz. But none of it moved me.
It was after I attended my first Kundiman retreat that I determined to find a way to feel. Kundiman Foundation is dedicated to fostering Asian American literature and at the time, in the early aughts, it focused only on poetry and I sorely needed the kind of kinship the fellowship provided. These poets wrote with such tenderness, with fierceness, with insight that pierced through the dullness of New York Times reportage. Their poems simmered with life and yearn of a kind I only dreamed of aching from.
I was jealous of the lives lived in their poems. Sensuous, patterned with history and lineage. Syncopated. I wanted my writing to ring with that kind of truth and conviction. So I set out to write the kind of poems my contemporaries wrote. It took a couple decades, but I think I’ve come around to writing the work that matters.
Hold the Olives
I know now that we show up in different ways and that they all matter. Since taking up this newsletter, not knowing at first where it was headed, I know that my writing can be a way to show up in the world. And even with a mere 500 subscribers I know that my writing matters. Last year at about this time, I wrote a piece ahead of Town Meeting Day in support of a candidate for Montpelier City Council. That person won their seat with four votes. I know four people who personally credited me for swaying their decision. It’s a small measure of influence. But it matters in this community.
Yesterday, one reader commented that they finally watched the free skate videos that I posted about last week–something they would never have done without my convincing reviews. I’m glad I was able to pass on that joy.
What am I trying to say? I guess where my vote feels less like a personal choice than an act of federal compliance, like filling out the Census form, my writing feels most like an act of personal conviction. And that it can have direct outcomes. Sometimes it feels like a responsibility. But I’ll keep doing it; it feels like a tangible, real action to take.
So nice to read your words, hear your thoughts.
As an old white woman who didn't care much about voting in my early years I've become much more dedicated to assist those in my senior community to navigate the challenges of voting. People with lack of transportation, those with disabilities, those without internet access are less likely to vote without assistance and encouragement.
So, with a friend, I gather change of address forms and absentee ballot applications from our local board of elections. I door-knock in my 124 apartment building and invite people to vote. The responses can be discouraging but in a previous election a state candidate won by 734 votes. And our building's residents contributed more than 34 votes. This helped me feel less discouraged by low participation numbers.
So, Phayvanh, congratulations on casting your first vote. Voting in an uncontested election can feel like a waste of time. But some elections can be won or lost by just a few votes. Your voice, your vote is important.