Step up and vote...

My maternal grandfather was one of the first Hispanic school board members for the El Paso Independent School District. He was always active in getting people to vote. I remember reading an editorial from the El Paso Times written by my grandfather responding to critics who accused him of paying the poll tax for Mexicans so they could vote. His response was thoughtful and articulate and someday I’ll dig it up to post it. The gist of it was that it was a good thing to have more people voting and if someone wanted to vote, a poll tax shouldn’t stop them. In 1957, despite the poll tax, Mexican-Americans voted in large numbers and elected the first Mexican-American mayor of a major city in the Southwest in the twentieth century.

My mother worked at the polls for most elections until she was about 65 years old. I grew up spending the day at the voting location talking to the neighbors and eating the snacks in the back room. By the time I was of voting age, my mother hounded me to vote for every election. There was no escaping it because she was usually the person who stamped “voted” by people’s names. She knew whether I had stepped up to my responsibilities or not. It took several years for me to tie my grandfather’s achievements to my mother’s long term dedication to the voting process to my own small actions that encourage people to vote. We are all products of our environments I guess.

For those of you who don’t have that type of background, you can share in mine and feel the expectation of generations of people expecting you to vote. So far the first two days of early voting has resulted in 6,566 votes for an elected position representing nearly 444,139 registered voters. The City of Austin needs to know that you are paying attention. Please take some time out over the next three days and VOTE!