A Review of My Experience As a Politically Active Person

I got my first "I Voted" sticker yesterday at the age of 27, in the third presidential election since I turned a voting age.  This may be surprising, since during my senior year of high school I wrote a ten minute speech about the importance of voter participation, and spoke passionately and competitively.  I wrote that speech and believed it.  I paced back and forth while writing it (probably at two in the morning), my conviction lifting me out of my seat.

Then I learned about the electoral college.

Then I went to my own college, and had five thousand more pressing, more personal, and more immediate things to think about.  It was 2004, and it was my first real semester in college.  My roommate and best friend from high school taterbugs got very political, joined campus political groups, and soon was off volunteering and campaigning.  I watched my first presidential debate, and she and I overnighted our absentee ballots to our home state because we waited until the last minute to mail them.  After pooling our pocket money for the $13 to share one overnighted envelope and proudly mailing it, we walked home from the campus post office and realized our votes had cancelled each other's out.  Not only that, but, being from Idaho, our electoral votes were going to Bush anyway.

Four years passed, and I always meant to pay attention to senate and local races, but there were always plenty of other things to distract me.  When the 2008 election came, I was in my third month of my first year of teaching, I was moping about a boy, I didn't know where to vote or how to register, couldn't be bothered to find out, and, I admit it, I didn't vote.

My first classroom, a world in itself.  I didn't travel outside of it mentally until school got out in May.  

But gradually, things changed.  In a fit of service I ended up helping with a food drive for an organization that called itself "Obama's Angels." A friend invited me to an Inaugural Ball.  Four years of secret shame for not voting and worked upon my conscience.  I discovered the Colbert Report and The Daily Show.  I switched schools, and my new coworkers neglected the usual lunch-time conversation of topics of recipes and sports, and instead spoke passionately about politics.  I became an Education Association Representative at my school.  I dated the son of a Utah state senator for six months.  I began to teach debate, and, through needing to be able explain politic and current events to my debaters, I began paying close, close attention.  It's no longer a normal day unless I've read two different news sources, at least one international.  I listen to news on the radio, I watch it on the TVs at the gym.  I talk about it at lunch, with my friends, with my students.

Charlie's Obama's Angels

After advertising at 120 apartments, this is all the food I collected.  

On our way to the ball.

Halfway through my move, it's been difficult to register to vote, and to prove my address, but unlike in years past, this year I was motivated to make happen.  And yesterday, I left work early to drive to my polling place before the lines got long, armed with opinions on almost every state and local race.  I voted, collected my sticker, and even participated in an exit poll run by local poli sci majors.

Then I met up with some friends for dinner and a victory party to watch the results.  It was a lot like watching a football game: every ten seconds there was some update to cheer or boo.  People were obsessively updating statistics, discussing history of individual players, and chasing cheerful little kids through the crowd.  The biggest differences were that everyone was dressed up, and that there was more wine than beer flowing.  We watched as the electoral score tipped back and forth, gradually rising like an unsteady balloon toward that 270 mark.

The game changing update was at first lost in the sea of statistics for a few moments.  The first few spectators began to cheer, and, as realization rolled in a heady wave over the crowd, everyone heaved themselves to their feet, fists pumping, hands waving, hugging, laughing, screaming, whooping, hollering.  As news cameras and interviewers from half a dozen different channels worked through the crowd capturing "live reactions," chants of "FOUR MORE YEARS!!! broke out, held sway for a while, than gave way to screams and laughs and general gaiety.  As we left the party because it was, after all, a work/school night, we noticed many people had been willing to park illegally and get tickets to attend the festivities.

Having now been both politically involved and politically apathetic, I have to admit, I enjoy and feel better now that I know what's going on in the world and my community.  I enjoyed being part of the national conversation, and I enjoyed the spirited individual conversations I had with friends.  At the same time, it has had its disadvantages.  I now have opinions, and opinions can be challenged, critiqued, and sometimes resented.  Additionally, the world is too big and too complicated to ever know everything.  The more you figure out, the more you feel obligated to keep listening, researching, and questioning.  And I hated the few arguments about politics I got into with friends who disagreed.  It was easier to talk politics without getting heated when I didn't care.

But the whole political process, the challenge of figuring out the truth, the drama, the successes, and the defeats, is addicting.  I'm beginning to understand sports junkies get so intense, because I could easily see the same happening to me with this new sport I've found: politics.