grateful
I almost cried while filling out my ballot today, and not, as I'd originally feared I might, from anger and frustration at the lack of good candidate choices in some of the races. I'd spent a lot of this past week working through that anger, coming to terms with this whole living in a state that hasn't elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994 thing. Let's just say I exercised my right to opt for the "none" half of "vote for none or one" in more than a few races. But see, that's just it. I also exercised my right to vote for some candidates I really quite like, and others who were at least better than their opponents. A lot of people take that right for granted, especially in states where the results of most races are unlikely to be significantly swayed by a single vote. But there are a lot of places where people don't have that right, and a lot of earlier times in our country's history (some of them not very long ago) where some of us wouldn't have, and maybe each vote is a small, small thing, but it's still power. It's still something to be grateful for. It's still something to cherish. I'd forgotten that, a little, as I pored over all the information I could find about the candidates (and some of the local ones were annoyingly hard to track down!). I was looking at it as a duty, then, and it's that, too. But then I was sitting there in that makeshift booth in the lobby of our neighborhood elementary school with the provided black pen, carefully filling in bubbles (we had the option of paper ballot or electronic, and all the people working the polling place were super nice and well-organized), and I remembered. Whatever other emotions I have about politics (and there are many), I am so, so grateful that today, I voted.