On Voting…

I was born in New Zealand in 1971. I immigrated to the United States as a six-year-old in 1977 (on the day Elvis Presley died, incidentally).

I didn’t get my citizenship for 32 more years. I was almost 40. I even served as a medic in the U.S. Navy as a non-citizen.

No excuse, other than laziness, a lack of interest in voting, and the obvious fact that I was a White man with no accent, so no one would know I wasn’t from the U.S. unless I told them.

When my mother was at the end of the her life in 2009, I finally got my citizenship because it was important to her (she had gotten hers decades earlier).

I remember my induction ceremony at the federal courthouse in Sioux Falls. The judge told a nice story about his grandfather immigrating from Lithuania, and I remember he said, “This and adoptions are the only two happy things that happen in this courtroom.”

There were 33 people. Me, a guy from Germany, and the rest were split between a group of Guatemalans and a group from the Congo. It was a nice ceremony, but I was kind of annoyed I had to be there. I had things at the office I had to get back to.

On the way out the door, some ladies from the Daughters of the American Revolution were handing out voter registration cards. I took one, fully intending to fill it out at some point, but I had places I needed to be.

I walked into the hall and across from me was a man sitting on a bench filling out the card he had just been given. I’ll never forget this guy – he was a dark, African man (presumably from the Congolese group). I’m guessing he was in his 50s or 60s. He was bald, and his head was streaked with long scars where the skin had healed a different shade. I don’t know his story, but I’m assuming he had been… hacked, with something. A machete? Those scars told a story I don’t think I wanted to hear.

I turned my head and looked down the hall. It was like the revelatory scene from a movie climax. There were benches along the hall, and on every one of them was a brand-new American citizen, diligently filling out their voter registration cards.

Very few things stun me into silence, but this…

I was suddenly struck by the appalling privilege I had experienced for 33 years. I didn’t NEED citizenship. For all intents and purposes, I was an American to everyone I met. I looked like an American, I talked like an American. To me, citizenship was just a piece of paper.

But some of the people in that hall had traveled thousands of miles and undergone untold horrors – like machetes to the head – to get to this moment, where they could finally register to vote in a free country.

So, I sat down and filled out my card.

I remembered this yesterday when I voted (early) down in Canton, South Dakota. I arrived before it opened, and I was behind a Hispanic guy in line. We got to talking, and he told me that he was from Venezuela. He had just become a citizen. This was his first election.

Go vote. You have a right that other people literally dream of.