My first time voting wasn't the first time I was able to vote. I'm a little disappointed in my past self for not taking the opportunity to vote when I could have. But at the time, I wasn't as aware of how important local elections were compared to presidential elections. I could have voted for the first time on Tuesday, May 6th of 2014 in Indiana's primary election. Yet I was not registered to vote in time for that election. So that election went and passed without me even thinking of making my way to the polls.
In all actuality, I didn't end up getting registered to vote until just last summer. I was back in Goshen to spend my vacation in between my freshman and sophomore years of college when I finally registered. I don't remember what jogged my memory to register, but I went online to the Indiana voter registration site. (It's this link here if you still need to register.) From there it only took about fifteen minutes for me to become a registered voter in Indiana. All I needed was my state drivers license (or ID if you don't have a license yet) and then I was good to register. It was a simple process that I wish I had done earlier.
That was how I first got ready to vote, but it wasn't actually my first time voting. Even after registering I missed a couple more opportunities to vote, such as November 3rd, 2015. My first time voting was in April of 2016. Now April isn't a usual month for voting as many people know. Usually, you vote in May for the primaries in Indiana. But at the time I was registered to vote in Goshen, as I did not have a permanent address in Indianapolis. So I voted with an absentee ballot since I had to vote as a resident of Goshen even though I would not be in my county at the time of the primaries.
The request for an absentee ballot before I actually looked at it seemed very daunting and intimidating. Yet once I pulled the request up on the Indiana voter website it could not have been easier. The request asks for basic information, like your name, county of residence, and address. Then the request gets into the actual questions for the election. In Indiana, it does ask you for a political party during the primaries so I personally chose Democrat. From there it asks you why you're voting absentee and then lists the different Indiana voter departments that you need to send the request to.
From there ,I sent the request in to the Elkhart County voting offices. Then I ended up getting my absentee ballot from Elkhart about a week or so later. That ballot was even easier than the request for it. It listed all the candidates for each position that was up for voting that round of primaries. So I picked out each candidate I wanted for the positions and sent it back to the Elkhart County office. And that was it, I had voted for the first time in my life.
It was easy and surprisingly didn't have a ton of intense pressure attached to it. I did my civic duty as an American citizen and voted. It was great and so simple to do. From here, I ask you to think about voting, especially if you have never voted before. The last day for voter registration is October 11th in Indiana. Get out there and register to vote, it's one of the greatest powers you have as a US citizen to vote. If you can't tell from my story, voting is not quite as difficult as people make it out to be. It is absolutely worth it to get out there and vote.
Just a quick note, this article was inspired by this John Green Vlogbrothers video. I found it pretty inspiring.
