52 Ancestors Week 44: Voting

 From Amy Johnson Crow: The theme for Week 44 is "Voting." Have you ever found your ancestor on a voter list? Any politicians in the family tree? How about someone involved with the women's suffrage movement?

Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos.

    Believe it or not I had a hard time trying to make an executive decision about what to write about this week as I haven't found anyone on a voting list. But, I do know for a fact that almost everyone in my family tree voted in every single election. Some, like the Italian immigrants, took voting very seriously for obvious reasons. They wanted to make the state they lived in and by extension the whole nation a better place for them and their descendants. The French-Canadians on my mother's side felt the same way. Take my grandfather Robert for example. When he started voting, America was a very different place.

Epic pipe is epic.

    Robert was born a few months before President Warren G. Harding passed away in 1923 and since then there have been seventeen men occupying the White House as Commander in Chief. To put that into perspective. I was born in 1978 and have seen eight men as Presidents. I didn't even become a registered voter until the tail end of the Clinton years!

  When Robert turned eighteen in June of 1941, America was just months away from entering World War II. Japan had yet to attack Pearl Harbor and the President at the time was Franklin D. Roosevelt. You can bet that the issues of Robert's day were incredibly different from when I started voting in 2000! I will say this. At least there were no hanging "chads" and no one blamed Florida. Yet.

    Of the issues, you can safely say that the war in Europe was on everyone's mind at the time. America even made immigration quotas in response to the flood of Jewish refugees entering Ellis Island. There were also quotas in place for immigrants of every nationality as well. These weren't the only hot topics of course since the country was just getting out of the Great Depression.

    In contrast, the major issues of the 2000 election involved issues such as the environment, gay rights and the rising issues of the Middle East among other issues. It seems some things never change. Still, they were important issues of the day. They all are!

Robert and Natalie Hamel, young
voters

    One of the other major differences between my grandfather and I was that during the war he filled out absentee ballots as he was serving overseas. While he was stationed in places like North Africa and Italy, the bases supplied troops with ballots and they would be shipped back to America. This practice is still used with the men and women who currently serve. However, I never served in the military. I do, however, know many people who have served and I'm pretty sure the absentee ballot system hasn't changed much since my grandfather's day.

    During the 2020 election, I did fill out a ballot at home and dropped it off at the polling place. While not exactly mailing it in, it was pretty similar to my grandfather's experience in one respect. We both didn't have to wait in line at an elementary school, church or any other polling place! 

    The way we vote has also changed dramatically since the 1940s. These days ballots are scanned by a machine after you fill in a circle next to your choice's name. You put them in a machine and walk away. In the 1940s, you wrote with a pen and someone would count the ballots by hand. Is it more efficient? Would you trust a machine to count a ballot? That's a discussion for another time and place. Not here!

    I'm sure there are other ways in which voting changed from when my grandfather started voting and when I started. The issues changed, of course and yet many have stayed the same over the years. The way we vote today has definitely changed. Thanks to social media, we now have greater access to the world around us thanks to 24 hour news and articles all over the Internet. We also have greater access to those running for office and more of a chance to hold them accountable. That can be a blessing and a curse at the same time.

Is the world a better place now than it was in the 1940s? That's debatable. For some, yes. For others there's still much work to be done and I'm not here to get into a debate about what should or shouldn't be done. Arguing politics on the Internet is never a good plan!

    However, I will say this. Voting gives you the ability to have a voice when you feel like you don't have any. It allows you to participate in something you believe in. It gives you, the average person, the ability to change the world for the better and have your voice be heard. That's why I've voted in every election since 2000. You want to be heard? Go out there and vote and hopefully make this world a better place.

I'm Chris Ferraiolo and I approve this message.