I early voted. I live in a state I still consider the bastion of the Confederacy, for many reasons, and I stood in that line knowing exactly where I was standing.
While I waited, white folks looked at me and others like me with unease. They were uncomfortable with the Black turnout. I watched it happen.
I was there for the governor’s race. The Black man on the ballot was an excellent candidate. He had a wonderful point of view, and I admired what he had to say. Something in my spirit told me he had it.
He didn’t. The Republican won. I’m not telling you anything about the count. I’m telling you what I know about this place. People here are not trying to have a Black man as governor over a Confederate-leaning state. That’s my opinion, and it’s also the record of how Black people have been treated in this state.
Republicans won almost every race in my state. I wasn’t surprised. But we sent a doctor to the US Senate. She’s the first Democrat in 28 years to win that office, and she did it with 50.6% of the vote. She seems like a very strong candidate who wants to make positive change.
Let’s see what the non-melanated faces look like at the next election.
The midterms are over. Democrats won the House and the Senate, and a lot of people are calling it a wave. If you voted, you get an opinion on what comes next. If you didn’t, please be quiet. You gave that right away.
Black women did the darned thing, as usual. Georgia is a lovely sea of melanin right now. Keisha Lance Bottoms won the governor’s race, and she’s the first Black woman elected governor in this country. Penny Brown Reynolds won Secretary of State. Tanya Miller won Attorney General. Democrats swept the state’s executive offices, and Black women led it. Rutgers counts at least 18 Black women who will serve in statewide elected executive offices across the country, up from a record of 11. I’m so proud.
Somebody in your family made that ballot possible. Somebody stood in a line, got turned away, passed a test they should never have been given, or paid a fee they should never have owed. So many Black families worked hard to be able to vote and have a voice.
Here’s the part that gets left out. In 2010, Michelle Alexander wrote The New Jim Crow, and her argument was that mass incarceration works as a system of racial control. Voting is one place you can see it. The Brennan Center counts 25 states that still take the vote from some people who are back in their own communities because of a past conviction. The Sentencing Project found about 4 million Americans barred from voting by a felony conviction in 2024, and about 72% of them were living outside of prison. That’s 4.5% of Black adults, about 1 in 22, compared with 1.3% of everyone else. More than 3 times the rate.
Those laws don’t say Black. They don’t have to. Black people represent less than 15% of American citizens and about a third of the people locked out. We aren’t inherently lawbreakers. The system was rigged to hand Jim Crow an easy win. When I think about what our ancestors went through to vote, apathy isn’t the first word that comes to mind. Racism is.
And if a law took your vote, I wasn’t talking to you earlier. This part is for you. Your ballot is on hold, but your voice isn’t. Register your neighbors. Ride people to the polls. Show up when a restoration bill gets a hearing.
Now it’s time to get to work.
I don’t want compromise for the sake of compromise. I don’t want committees that meet and never decide. I want change. Sweeping, broad change that revamps America and puts us in forward motion again.
And remember who makes the laws. It isn’t the president. The president can sign a law or veto it, but Congress writes it, both the House and the Senate. They have a duty to make laws that will bring positive change for years to come. Let the bills start rolling in. Let’s get to voting, Congress!
Start with reform and with aid to the poor. Restore the vote to people who’ve served their time. Spend less on defense and more on the people living here. Let’s focus on America for a little while, and let the foreign policy run through somebody other than Iran and Israel.
Fix the power grid. Get clean water to every tap in the country. Repair the roads and the bridges. And don’t let our forests and Native American lands go to the highest bidder for oil money.
Fix education, because a child’s zip code shouldn’t decide her future. Name systemic racism out loud and write the laws that undo it. Take a hard look at our food laws and what food costs, because a family that can’t afford to eat well can’t do much else well.
Voting reform is imminent. We have too many irregularities in how states run their elections, and the popular vote versus the Electoral College needs to be addressed again. Twice this century, the candidate with fewer votes won the White House. The Electoral College was designed in the 1780s, and the world looks very different now. We have to remember that. Casting a vote for the candidates who hold your values and your point of view matters. Election night feels like a game of chance. People across the country stay tuned to their computers and TVs, waiting to see how it falls. We all want things to work out, and it starts with coming from a center of fairness.
Black voters are already saying Democrats don’t get a pass. I agree. We showed up. Now they show up.
So many Black families worked hard to be able to vote. Now is the time to make it count.
What’s the first thing you want them to fix?
