While some people didn’t bother to vote because they couldn’t care enough to participate in the election process, at least two young adults took their responsibility to such great lengths that it cost them a pretty penny.
Domonique Williams, who works as a contract administrative assistant at the Federal Aviation Administration in Washington, and Larry Feazell, an 18-year-old Howard University freshman, both had to fly to their home states to vote. Neither could really afford the trip, but with help from family each went to extraordinary lengths to cast a ballot this week, according to two news reports.
Williams, 27, had requested an absentee ballot from her hometown of Boston weeks in advance, reported The Washington Post’s Manuel Roig-Franzia. The ballot never came, despite her repeated attempts to get it mailed. When it became clear she wouldn’t get her ballot, Williams went back home.
“Hers is the story of an unusually dogged American voter,” Roig-Franzia wrote. “That’s because Domonique certainly wouldn’t be who is she is, so persistent and unstoppable, if it wasn’t for her great-grandmother, Edna Murrell, still a force in Dominque’s life at age 91. Edna had taught Domonique the value and privilege of voting, and she had to find a way to live up to that legacy.
Williams found a JetBlue ticket to Boston for $289.60.
“She did the math in her head,” Roig-Franzia said. “College loans. Rent. A day off work without pay.”
She wanted her vote to be counted nonetheless.
In the end, her grandmother offered help to pay for the ticket.
Feazell’s story is similar. He was pushed by his mother to return to Las Vegas to vote, according to a local Fox television station. Feazell had missed the deadline for an absentee ballot in Nevada, but his mom wasn’t about to let him off the hook that easily.
She paid $450 for an airplane ticket so her son could go home to vote. “It wasn’t so much about the candidates, it was about exercising his right to vote,” Dorothy Wesley said.
“It was definitely bill money, but it’s a sacrifice,” said Wesley. “Life is a sacrifice, and a lot of people sacrificed for our right to vote.”
Typically, I wouldn’t approve of such an expense when bills have to be paid, but Feazell’s mother is right. A lot of people over the years has spent so much more and even lost their lives fighting for the right to vote. I won’t fuss this time. This was money well spent.
Fiscal Cliff
It’s still about the economy. The election is over, thank goodness, but who can celebrate when you watch the stock market take a dive, unemployment is still too high and there’s that looming fiscal cliff that so many people may be tossed over.
One of the immediate issues on President Obama’s plate is that fiscal cliff, which is “nearly $500 billion in automatic tax hikes and spending cuts set to take effect in January that could throw the nation back into recession,” reports Lori Montgomery and Zachary A. Goldfarb of The Washington Post. Obama has threatened to veto legislation to avert the cliff by extending the George W. Bush-era tax rates for the wealthy.
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