Election Day Report from Madison County

Madison County KFTC members have done a tremendous job in recent weeks phone banking not only their own local contacts, but the bulk of our at-large members outside of KFTC chapters in Kentucky.  10 dedicated volunteers made over 1,200 calls!.  A report of the day from Jeff From is below. 

In all the people we called in our phonebank there was no one that wanted a ride to the polls. I was sure that there was someone in Madison County that needed a ride, but we went canvassing anyway. We were in an apartment community up in Richmond re-visiting people who Rose (the Jobs For Justice Organizer here) wanted to get voter guides to.  We helped a family move a couch into their house, and then gave them a ride to the polls.

At another apartment community there was Miss Patty, a woman who I had registered on October 6th. I had to stop and visit with her again. She was a very sweet woman who was proud of her party affiliation and shared quite a few family stories with me. I felt compelled to re-visit Miss Patty because during our phone banking one of our volunteers told me about this woman in Richmond who was under the impression that I was going to bring by a ballot on Election Day so she could vote. I stopped by today to make sure she knew what my limitations under the law were.

She was home bound because of a very bad hip, and could not even sit in a wheelchair to get to the car. I apologized to her for any misunderstanding and tried to problem solve with her as to how she could get to the polls, but no solution was found. She was feeling awful about not voting and in all of her life (age was in the mid-80's) she had missed voting once, and that was when she was in the hospital knocked out. She was worried that her presidential candidate of choice was going to lose by one vote and it would be her fault. "If I knew that he needed my vote, I would crawl on my hands and knees dragging this old hip behind me."

I shared the lastest political polls with her and she felt comforted that her vote wouldn't have been decisive alone.  As I was leaving she did mention that if her candidate did lose by one vote that she would be coming to look for me. I told her that would be fine as long as she took care of that hip.  

                                                                               - Jeff From