Take a sled to the polls, Massachusetts!

Posted January 19th, 2010 by Katie Bethell

Posted Under: H: Health Care For All Kids S: Sick Days, Paid

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6 Comments

January 20, 2010 at 6:04 pm by Alison

I recently moved to a different town in Massachusetts and I had forgotten to change my voter registration…and with the bad weather, it looked like it would take HOURS to get to my old polling place using the MBTA bus system (I don’t have a car)…so I called a taxi and paid a guy $70 to drive me through the snow and wait while I voted so he could drive me home…I figured, “This is my contribution to the Coakley campaign!”…It felt so good!

…Then when I got home, I called a friend and discovered that he was having trouble getting his car un-stuck so he could get to his neighborhood polling place, so we called the Coakley campaign office and they found someone to give him a ride to the polls…

I know this all just seems sad now that we know the depressing result of the election…you could say that my vote and my friend’s vote didn’t make enough of a difference…but at least it made a difference to *us* personally… At least we can tell our grandkids that we TRIED to do the right thing…

Still, yesterday made it even more clear to me than ever before that we need some changes in our voting process! Right now, the way we do “Election Day” in this country is really biased toward people with no kids who have flexible white-collar jobs (they can get the time off to go to the polls even though it’s a work day) and people with really awesome cars (they can drive through bad weather and get to the polls even when the rest of us are snowed in). The minute I woke up and saw the bad weather yesterday, I knew the Republicans were going to win. It’s sad that we have to allow our whole political fate to be decided by the elite few who can hop in their fancy SUV’s and get to the polls in the middle of a blizzard.

But KEEP THE FAITH! The election result was bad, but at least it was pretty CLOSE…can we turn it back around soon? I hope so! Don’t go to the Dark Side, Massachusetts!

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January 19, 2010 at 8:54 pm by annemarie

I actually called in “sick” to work in order to drive the round trip mile from Boston to Western Mass where I used to live and was still registered. I did this with 2 large posters on each side of my car passenger windows in big permanent marker black ink “V O T E MARTHA” I did all this in order to support our proposed health care bill!

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January 19, 2010 at 8:11 pm by CJ

I voted at 7:15 am. Time to take back our country with the Scott heard ’round the world.

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January 19, 2010 at 4:06 pm by Gennie

Not only is it snowing, but my car broke down last night, so I wasn’t sure how I was going to get to the polls today. My husband and I decided to go together – with both kids – before he went to work. It was the only way we could figure out that we’d both get to vote.

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