Reflection on an Election

Yesterday morning as I was getting Emilia ready for school and Audra ready to go to her friend Kate's house, I happened to catch the footage of Barack and Michelle Obama and their daughters going to vote together in Chicago. The girls and I watched the footage, and I fielded a couple of questions from Emilia about what they were doing and why all the people were waiting in line. I explained that today was finally the day that we get to vote (Emilia's been interested, so I've let her watch a couple of the debates with me even though they're after her bedtime) and that in our country we believe that it is important to give everyone the chance to have a say in who our leaders are.

After dropping off Emilia at school, Audra and I stopped in at our polling place and voted. She played with a soccer ball with several of the poll workers while I completed my ballot. As we were voting, a man and a wife and their daughter came in to vote. He was carrying a stool and the daughter had a copy of the voter's guide, which had a sample ballot. As they voted, she stood on the stool and filled out her sample ballot while they filled out their ballots. They were just finishing up as Audra and I walked out with our "I Voted" stickers.

Later that afternoon, Emilia told me that her class voted. She told us she voted for Obama because she says, "He has ears like Uncle Cody's." She probably also had picked up on her father's running commentary as we watched the debates.

The role of children in our election is more significant than the obligatory references to the world we want our children to live in. We should take our children to the polls, we should watch the debates with them, we should let them hear our conversations, we should let them fill out ballots.