“I’m really excited and I’m also feeling empowered, to have a voice in the democratic process. So this also remind me the journey I took to arrive here and also it reminds me like it’s kind of like emotional the way that I say, ‘oh, oh my gosh, I remember when I came here, how it was really tough for me to start the process’. So now I can say ‘ah, okay’, now I can say that I feel that I have power compared to how I was feeling before, because I can say that I have achieved a lot of opportunities.
Yeah, it’s a kind of like a milestone because I remember the way I grew up they told us sometimes most people just complaining about how everything goes in the country, but then I remember they told us you are the one who can change the system that you are complaining. If you say that I don’t like this, I don’t like this. So who else is going to change that? It’s only you.”
“Because if you don’t take action, I think nothing would change. But it’s better to take action and I’m glad that here we have the opportunity to some of those media, that just teach people or show people the advantage of voting and yeah, because they don’t make pressure to anybody, but it’s just to show your rights.
It’s your right, which is really different from my country— people put pressure on you to vote for them. So if you don’t vote for them, it means dangerous. So people are really, I don’t know, they have to vote for them, in order to save their life. But here we are free, you can just vote.”
“I remember I always see everybody has that sticker, “I Voted”. That drove me. Like before I say, why am I not eligible for that. When I see that, I say, oh my gosh, I’m really excited to have picture on Facebook and said that I now I Voted.”
“My son, he’s five years old and he’s really excited because I remember when I was preparing to take citizen tests, he was always with me and practiced this, who can vote, who’s eligible to vote—this questions he keeps asking, ‘can you play again the YouTube?’
Now I’m eligible to vote, He keeps asking me, are you going to vote? Are you 18? because he knows that you have to be 18 years old. So, he’s really excited.”
“The reason why I want to go earlier is because my wife asked me if we can go together. It’s my first experience so it feels good to go together, because she knows how it’s really important for me and she remembers the journey I took. It took me a long time to have this opportunity. So it would be kind of like a good opportunity to go together and enjoy and celebrate together.”
“If you arrive earlier, you can just have enough time to ask and also not feeling shamed to ask what you don’t understand. That is most of new voters. That is the problem we have. So sometimes we feel that ‘oh my gosh, I don’t know how to do that’ and feel shame to ask questions, but just be open and don’t hesitate to ask if you have any question. And also sometimes there’s those who don’t speak English, it’s really tough for us. You don’t know exactly how you ask those questions and you don’t feel comfortable, but yeah, I’m glad that these community has a lot of volunteers who support those who don’t speak English or who English is not their first language, so I’ve seen a lot of supports in this community.”
