By Miriam Levine Helbok
“I’m bored already,” I heard the woman sitting next to me say under her breath, after writing four letters during a Vote Forward get-out-the vote letter-writing klatch in the Bronx, New York City, in September 2019. A year later, I’m still writing such letters, and after upwards of 5,000, I’ve never felt bored.
I imagine that if a portable scanner had made images of my brain that afternoon, brightly flashing points would have indicated how fired up I felt about this activity. Everything about the project seemed made for me, starting with my decades-long interest in poor voter turnout in the overwhelming majority of U.S. elections at all levels— city, state, and federal. I once wrote a college term paper about nonvoters and the reasons people offered to explain not going to the polls on Election Day. Some people who had responded to surveys about voting had said that they had too much housework to deal with on Election Day, while other people blamed inclement weather. Other than that, only one thing stands out in my mind from that research: In nearly every major election I read about, if all the people who were eligible to vote had actually cast their ballots, the results of those elections might have been very different. Sadly, that is still true.
My long fascination with the names of people and places has also fed into my enthusiasm for writing Vote Forward letters. As a small child, long before I gave even a passing glance to news in the fat copy of The New York Times that my father bought every Sunday, I read the names in the birth announcements. I also loved reading the names of cities and towns in the ancient atlas that my parents owned. How amazed I felt when I saw how many towns bore the name “Cloverdale” in the United States—currently 17, according to Wikipedia.
A sample Vote Forward letter, as written by the author
The Vote Forward voter lists are a treasure trove of given names, surnames, town and city names, and street names. I have written to hundreds of people whose given names were new to me; sometimes there was no way for me to even know the gender of the person. Surnames, of course, are endlessly diverse. I wonder how people wind up with some of them. I wonder whether the number of surnames in the world is still increasing, or at what point—recently or long ago—the number of names leveled off, and why.
I think about the people who choose the names for streets and what their thoughts were when they did: Bronze Spur Street, Nightfall Drive, Lincoln Log Way, Parasol Lane ... each one holds a story of how it came to be. Of course, that is also true for the names of towns and cities, so many of which I had never heard of. It was a humbling reminder of the vastness and diversity of our nation and how little I know about so much of it.
I routinely write many personal letters and short essays by hand, so using a pen has not become foreign to me, as it has for so many other adults and, I suspect, countless adolescents and teenagers. I take pleasure in writing as neatly as I can, so that the recipient of each Vote Forward letter can see (assuming that they notice) that I have taken pains—especially when I write their name in the salutation. After the printed “Sincerely,” I always write, “with best wishes and hope for our future,” and I sign my name with a flourish. At the bottom of each, I write these words by the author and environmentalist Edward Abbey: “The best cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy.” On the flap of each envelope, I use a flowery-looking script (that I hope looks old-fashioned) to write “We the people of the United States,” to remind recipients of the opening words of the Constitution.
We the people each have a vote, and a voice!
I will forever feel grateful to Dr. Kathryn Solomon, who organized that September 2019 Vote Forward letter-writing party as a member of the organization Swing Left.
Kathy, 2,705 Vote Forward letters, and the author
Kathy had printed out form letters, each of which left space for a Vote Forward writer to explain why he or she voted in every election, and which—thanks to the miracles of computerized, publicly available voter rolls—had the name and address of an individual at the bottom. The letters we were writing that day urged people to register in a state whose identity escapes my memory. Accompanying each letter was a registration form, a sheet with instructions for filling it out, and a sheet that could be folded to form a pre-addressed envelope that did not need a stamp and could be closed with a few pieces of tape. Kathy printed hundreds of such letters for me, as did Stephen Real, another Swing Left member. My friend Mariellen Rich eventually printed thousands of letters for me, for which I am endlessly grateful.
The message I have written thousands of times explains to each voter or potential voter why I personally choose to vote in every election. The reason, I explain, is that “in nearly every one, if all the people who did not vote had actually voted, the results might have been very different. That is why every person’s vote truly counts. Your vote represents your voice, which deserves to be heard. Your voice—your vote—really matters!” Although I can’t picture the person I am addressing, I think of each one as an individual, and I enclose with each letter an invisible prayer that my words will inspire them to act.
I get pleasure in knowing that none of these strangers has the faintest idea about who I am. Who among them would imagine a 76-year-old white-haired woman sitting, often buck naked, in a high-rise, with a view all the way to the two bridges that connect the Bronx with the borough of Queens? They can’t know that my little cat, Annie, sometimes sits on the loveseat next to me, or on my chair nestled against my back, hoping for a massage of her belly or a scratch on her back near her tail.
I feel immensely fortunate to be able to write Vote Forward letters. I have enough savings to spend money on pens and dozens of refills, envelopes safely ordered online, and stamps—mostly, oddly enough, from eBay sellers, who offer rolls of 100 stamps at significant discounts, apparently having stocked up years ago when prices were lower. I am fortunate to live by myself now, with responsibility only for Annie, so that I can spend my time as I please, and I am lucky in that I am happy to be by myself, never feeling lonely. I am fortunate that my writing hand continues to function well, with little or no pain, even after hours of careful printing. And I am incredibly fortunate that this project is taking place in the age of the internet, because as I write, I listen to YouTube videos. I listen to newscasters and commentators who have grown to feel like valued companions, and talks by eminent historians. And best of all, I can listen to music, virtually any composition that I desire, with a choice of soloists and orchestras and conductors.
Among my favorites is Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, the “New World” symphony; not only because of its gorgeous melodies but because it represents to me the greatness of our nation. Although Dvořák, a Czech, spent only a few years here, he was enormously inspired by the music of Native Americans and African Americans, and composed that symphony with them in mind. I particularly enjoy the Christmas 2018 performance by the Gimnazija Kranj Symphony Orchestra of Slovenia, conducted by Nejc Bečan. The audience’s standing ovation when it ended, which continued for many minutes, somehow echoes my fervent hope that voters will cast their ballots in the 2020 presidential election in record numbers and usher in a better future for everyone, everywhere.
Time is running out to participate in the most popular Daily Kos get-out-the-vote activity ever, which has proven effective at increasing Democratic turnout. Click to sign up or log into your Vote Forward account and write letters to infrequent, but Democratic, voters with battleground states. We're getting close to the 10 million mark!
