It took some convincing and a bit of (legal) bribery, but my son eventually came along to the precinct with me before we drove down the bayou to my sister’s house to help her put up the Christmas trees she’s too old to handle alone. Given the vagaries of birthdays and a misfiled voter registration attempt at the DMV, his first opportunity to vote was yesterday in the run-off election. As is his nature, he was a bit nervous, visibly anxious, and eventually defiant—but I’ll say that even with his special needs accounted for, he’s a pretty good kid overall. Convincing him of the importance of voting, though, was an exercise in transforming the abstract into the personal. He wanted to visit his aunt and then head out to do the clothes shopping trip we had planned during the week; voting was an unknown, an inconvenience, a waste of time.
Funny thing about the enclave we live in. It’s the seat of Terrebonne Parish in Louisiana, a coastal and mostly rural parish that trends pretty conservative these days—though it wasn’t always so. The place was always mixed but was primarily a blue-collar town when I was young. Over the years it’s transformed itself into an oil-field service area. Sure, there’s big money to be made, but its single-dimensional industry makes it particularly susceptible to the whims of the crude oil market. Still, the parish remains fairly mixed. Without going into excruciating detail, our parish has roughly 113,000 people, has a median income of $47,650, and a poverty rate of 20.1%; of that population 67% identify as white, 19% as African American, and 5% as Native American.
When we got to the small, brick community center (four blocks from our house), it took a bit more cajoling and a few not-so-veiled threats to get him into the polling place. When we got in we were greeted with the great empty expanse of the community center with three women sitting behind the sign-in tables and one man sitting by each of the two electronic voting booths. No other voters were in there. We made it to the tables where we chatted about the weather and I handed over my son’s voter registration card and identification card. The women couldn’t have been nicer to him and were very accommodating and friendly—I know for a fact there are very, very few white people who vote in our precinct and the fact that my son was registered Democrat went a long way to making everyone there comfortable.
There was a bit of confusion when he and I exited the booth, however, because obviously they realized he would need physical assistance (you can’t not see that) but didn’t quite know how to handle it. One of the older gentlemen manning the booth called us over when we came out and I had to sign in (as I should have done when entering) to be allowed to accompany him into the booth. The women apologized—it was their first election as commissioners—and I explained that I didn’t want to seem rude so I didn’t mention the procedure (which I went over several times before we went to make sure there were no issues) when we came in; we all had a good giggle over that. Turns out that even though our parish voted 64%-36% for the Republican candidate, our small precinct went almost 80% for John Bel.
But this is about his voting. We did get into that booth and he got to push the button next to the names of the three people he chose. The first, of course, was John Bel Edwards. As nervous, anxious, and even obstreperous as he was there was a real light that went off when he pushed the “My Vote” button at the bottom to record his votes and that electronic chime rang out. He calmed down, stopped fidgeting, looked at me and said something like, “that wasn’t so bad.” We eventually made our way out the chilly hall into the bright morning sunlight and took a bit of a break before leaving. I told him I was proud of him for voting and he, in his own way, let me know he was pretty happy to have done it.
Experts tell us that there are four major fronts that work toward getting people to vote: (1) educate early and well; (2) peer pressure; (3) healthy competition; and, (4) the personal touch. In my life—some many of those years spent as an criminal justice reform activist—I’ve found that sometimes getting people to vote is just waking them up and physically getting them there. Yesterday morning before we left house, three kids banged on our back door. DJ, the youngest, wanted to know if he could clean up the yard for some change. He does this every couple weeks and he often stops by when I am out in the yard to see if he can do any chores. This morning, however, he brought along two friends from the housing complex, Tanisha and Destiny. Unlike the reserved DJ, the girls (both about 11 to DJ’s 9) wanted to come inside while I went to hunt up change. They asked if they could walk around the small house, asked if they could play the piano, and asked if they could go in my son’s room (DJ was already in there talking to my son). I told them “yes,” “yes,” and “of course”; and my son was surprised and thrilled at having the visitors.
I ran them off with a promise we would do yard work later in the week and telling them that my son and I had to go vote before we ran errands. As he’s apt to do, my son continued, obsessively, to ask about why he had to vote. I could tell that “paving roads” and “trying to get expanded public transit in town” weren’t working. “Pump stations” and “levees” were even less effective as his anxiety rose steadily. But—and I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier—the visit by DJ and Tanisha and Destiny was key. We talked about them and their lives and whether he would want them to have a safer place to live when they grew up, whether they should be able to see doctors when they got sick, whether they should have a chance to be whatever they want to be when they grew up. My son is aware enough to understand his limitations; his dreams are small on the overall scale of dreams. But he understands well enough the potential of others and the real desire to be happy and safe. He agreed to vote—as it turns out—not so much to help himself but to help them. Both a simple and profound realization for someone who lives such an internal life, I’m pretty proud of him for that act of kindness.
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Now, a song by another Louisiana Governor, Jimmy Davis.