The Story of Maria and Jean

Maria has been a U.S. citizen for almost a decade, but has never seen much value in voting. She’s stayed focused on the next task at hand – getting a job, keeping a job, finding a new one, taking care of her family, paying the rent, getting health care - doing what she could do to help herself through a series of menial labor postings. Now, sitting in a GED classroom in Tucson, AZ, hoping as a 28 year old to get her high school equivalency onto her record, she explained that “voting always seemed like something that other people did. I never really felt that it affected me. Besides, there’s so much I don’t know, I just didn’t think I would understand how to vote.”

Jean, a recently laid off office secretary in her 40s, is currently enrolled in a state funded job training program in central New Hampshire. Preoccupied with trying to find another job, and eager to get her family’s health insurance back, she is hoping that additional job training will prepare her for good paying jobs that do not yet exist. Jean has never voted because she’s “never been quite sure the difference it would make for me.” Then, upon further reflection, she confesses that doesn’t believe she’d “actually know how to vote. It seems kind of complicated.”

Maria, who lives an hour from the Mexican border, and Jean, who’s about an hour from the Canadian one, offer similar explanations for not voting. No matter how many campaign ads appear in their living rooms, no matter how many people knock on their doors and no matter how much information is put into their hands, nothing, it seems, could turn them into voters.

A Shift Takes Place

Then, each of them, thousands of miles apart, participated in a brief educational workshop that dramatically changed their ideas about voting. They learned a new skill for identifying key decisions made by elected officials that affect them and then developed another essential but often overlooked skill, the ability to ask their own questions. “I see now that if I don’t vote,” Jean said, “other people will just keep on making decisions for me.” Maria realized that as well and also noted that “for the first time, I feel like I really want to vote and I need to vote.”

The workshop that led to these changes is a key part of The Right Question Project (RQP) Voter Engagement Strategy for Election Day and Beyond. Maria and Jean come out of the workshop with new skills and a sharp appreciation of the value of voting, a deeper sense of urgency about the need to vote and much greater confidence in their own ability to vote.