Voters at the SteelStacks polling location waited roughly five minutes in the morning to reach the polls on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Brown and White spoke to Bethlehem residents and Lehigh students to learn more about what was important to them when voting.<\/p>\n
Q: Why did you come out to the polls today?<\/p>\n
Carmen Davis: It is so important not just for seniors but the young people to realize that this is the only way to change things. We can get angry, we can sit home and fuss, but that\u2019s not going to change anything.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Voting is what changes things, and if we want things right now to get back to at least some type of normalcy. This is the only way to do it.<\/p>\n
Jacqueline Darling: I feel that it\u2019s very important to vote, no matter how young you are or old you are. When you\u2019re at the age to vote, you should vote.<\/p>\n
Thomas Stein, Lehigh alumnus: It\u2019s civic duty \u2014 like an exercise you should never get out of, like getting up in the morning.<\/p>\n
Q: Do you always vote in-person?<\/p>\n
Jacqueline Darling: I always vote in-person, and one reason why I definitely came today was because of all the controversy and the confusion and the commotion and the mistrust. I had a mail-in ballot, but I was like, \u201cNo, I think I just need to go.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Someone sent me information (that said) to make sure none of the poll workers when you go to cast your ballot leave any type of marks on the ballot because if there\u2019s an R or D or star, a line, a dot, a scratch, anything, it will be disqualified and thrown in the trash. So that means your vote won\u2019t count. You can\u2019t do that if you send it in the mail. So that was one of the main reasons I came out.<\/p>\n
Thomas Stein, Lehigh alumnus: I always (vote in-person). And not that I don\u2019t trust (the system), I just always vote in-person.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tyler Lewis \u201827G: Yes, I vote in-person.<\/p>\n
Quin Smith \u201826: I voted last time with a mail-in ballot that I dropped off on the North Side. This time I forgot to request something so I had to vote in-person.<\/p>\n
Q: Is there one issue, or aspect of the campaigns, that matters most to you?<\/p>\n
Carmen Davis: Oh, absolutely. They\u2019re talking about taxing seniors\u2019 disability money and social security. It\u2019s very important to me. If we get taxed, we end up with nothing. Everything has already gone so high, the tariffs and everything that\u2019s going on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We cannot let them continue to cut programs and cut funding. Seniors, young people, it doesn\u2019t matter. We all are out here just trying to live one day at a time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jacqueline Darling: The high rising cost of food, gas, the cost of living. Period.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You know I personally have been affected by it, and my daughter who\u2019s in her early 40s and her husband who\u2019s in his early 40s. They never (before) saw a struggle or a pinch. I never really heard them say anything about the cost of groceries or \u201cthis gas is getting ridiculous\u201d or \u201cdo we take the kids on a vacation or do we stay home.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That affected me this year more than ever because I actually heard them constantly in conversation (about rising costs) \u2014 I spend a lot of time with them in South Jersey \u2014 and that just really pierced my heart. That it\u2019s even affecting them, the younger generation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I thought it was just me and my generation that\u2019s struggling to pay the bills, to buy the food, to get the medication, to get gas. It just breaks my heart to see that my child is going through that, and I\u2019m hoping and praying that it\u2019ll be better when my grandchildren get older. But the way it looks now, it seems like everything is going down instead of progressing.<\/p>\n
Thomas Stein, Lehigh alumnus: I think the bias, the bigotry, the whole idea of having a party separate us from each other as neighbors is just outrageous. I\u2019ve never seen it happen so bad in the last four years.<\/p>\n
Tyler Lewis \u201827G: Showing up.<\/p>\n
Quin Smith \u201826: I just usually always vote blue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Q: Do you have any advice for younger voters?<\/p>\n
Carmen Davis: Please vote. Please vote. It is so important. It doesn\u2019t matter your party. It doesn\u2019t matter your opinion. Everybody has one. Stick with your principles and do what your heart tells you, and that\u2019s what voting is.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jacqueline Darling: Please ask questions if you\u2019re confused about how to use the voting machines or the voting process itself. Ask because there are people, as I found out today, that are willing to help you, and they\u2019re doing it with a smile on their face\u2026 So, for the younger people to ask, don\u2019t get frustrated, don\u2019t get angry, don\u2019t think that this is an older generation\u2019s problem, and you guys are going to breeze through it. No, take a stance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Have enough belief in yourself that your vote matters and that it counts. If it\u2019s a long line or somebody\u2019s giving you backlash for whatever or whoever you\u2019re gonna vote for, still just go and vote for what it is that you have in your heart and who it is that you want to vote for.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thomas Stein, Lehigh alumnus: Get into a habit. Your ability to vote is your only chance to get involved in this process. If you don\u2019t, it\u2019s on you. It\u2019s important that you all get involved in the process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Voters at the SteelStacks polling location waited roughly five minutes in the morning to reach the polls on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[5451,153,155,154,50,79878],"class_list":["post-321507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-5-minute-read","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-politics","tag-q-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}