My wife, Marcella, sent out this email about her Election Day experience:
my mom and i were in the middle of going door-to-door at the homes of people the obama campaign had identified as likely supporters, reminding them that it was election day, that the polls closed sharply at 7:30, and, if needed, where their polling location was, when her cell phone rang. the akron campaign HQ was calling to ask us to drive a woman to vote. we handed off our walk sheets to josh and drove to a primarily african-american neighborhood to pick her up.
barbara was a lovely woman, in her 70s i’d guess, and seemingly very happy to be sharing this most amazing day with others who were just as excited. my mom and i waited for barbara outside while she went through the long ballot, hanging out with other volunteers from as near as a couple blocks away to as far away as california.
a bunch of cars with voters drove up and then a man, with a large sealed envelope in his hands, walked into the parking lot. i asked him if he was going to vote and he told me he’d already voted that morning and was simply dropping off his 97-year-old mother’s absentee ballot because it was too hard for her to stand in line. i told him that he had to drop it off at the downtown board of elections — that her vote wouldn’t be counted at the local polling station. clearly that wasn’t good news. so i offered him a ride and he agreed immediately.
after we dropped barbara back at home, we learned from michael that he’d lost his maintenance job at a cleveland-area rubber company the week before. i told him i worked at GOJO and … he said, ‘i know GOJO. my niece works downtown for GOJO.’ he mentioned her name and i knew her instantly. then he went on to say that he grew up on the street where GOJO had its first facility back in the 1950s through 1970s. he said he knew the guy who started the company, used to hand out footballs to the neighborhood kids and they’d play in front of the building. he said, ‘he’s a jewish guy, right? and ‘the last time i saw him he had a ponytail.’ all true. then i told him that we lost jerry lippman a few years ago and michael said he’d read that in the paper with a certain respect in his voice.
on the way back from the board of elections, michael told my mom and me that if we hadn’t offered him a ride, he wouldn’t have been able to make the trip and his mom’s vote wouldn’t have been counted to elect barack obama.
It’s stories like this that make all the effort worth it.
Would love to hear your story — about Election Day — or anything that’s happened, since.
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