blog entry

She Doesn't Vote...

My dad isn’t what you’d call a career politician, but he’s currently running for the top office in my hometown. Last night, friends of the family threw him a “coffee.” (For those of you not from small towns, allow me to translate: a bunch of neighbourhood folks get together to eat pound cake and gossip, then Daddy gives a little speech.)

I found myself seated next to a fabulous older woman that I’ve known for many years. She’s engaging and exciting with lots of opinions, and everybody listens when she opens her mouth. After the coffee was over, we got to talking politics and mud-slinging and our families... it was one of the best conversations I’ve had in a while.

“Mom, I just love Ms. So-and-so,” I said after we got home. Mother started at me blankly, then dropped the bomb:

“You know she doesn’t vote. She never has. She isn’t even registered. She says her husband is the voter, and she doesn’t want to.”

Is this the 1880s?! I am still in a state of shock. Her husband is a wonderful, easy-going man, and it’s pretty obvious that she, not he “rules the roost.” I don’t think it’s an issue of him not “letting” her vote... for some reason beyond me, she doesn’t want to do it.

Was it the pound cake that brought her to the coffee? The town gossip? If she didn’t care, then why engage me about the election when we could just as easily have talked about the Olympics? I know she wasn’t just being polite; she has an interest in the future of the city that her family lives in.

My grandmother has managed several political campaigns, and this woman is younger than my grandmother, so I can’t blame her age or the world she grew up in either. I wish someone could make me understand.