Election Day

I was taught as a child that Election Day was one of the very best things about being an American-  It was a chance for all adult citizens, no matter their income or background, to have an equal say in who governed their towns, their states, and their country. I couldn’t wait to vote for the first time, and I took the responsibility seriously. I read everything I could find about each of the candidates and their platforms and I based my decisions- and continue to do so- on the person, and not the party.

Two decades later, the prospect of Election Day fills me with dread. Over the years, I’ve gotten a very up-close-and-personal look at what lies behind the glossy campaign signs, the canned speeches, and the camera-ready hair and makeup, and it is frankly disturbing. I saw it while interning at CNN’s Washington bureau in college. I saw it as a political reporter at the Statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina. I got a heaping helping of it covering the 2012 presidential election for CafeMom and HLN. After I spent a year interviewing the presidential candidates, riding in their campaign buses, attending White House briefings, covering the political conventions, and continually dealing with the politicians and the people running their campaigns, I’ve come away from all of these experiences with the unshakeable belief that our political system is so broken, so corrupt, that it’s literally impossible for a politician to make it very far at all without losing his or her conscience somewhere along the way. And too often, it begins on a local level.

This Election Day is proof. I live in a Nashville community known for its neighborliness, its warmth, and its small-town-in-a-big-city feel. I think I’ve been here long enough to have a good read on what my district wants in a legislative representative- They want a candidate with a good heart, one who’s influenced by what’s right and what’s best for our community, as opposed to being influenced by those who can make the biggest campaign donations. My neighbors want someone with the commitment and influence to help improve our local schools and economy, someone who can be provide a strong, clear voice for our needs and our priorities and our dreams for the future.

This is what we want. What we’ve ended up with is something entirely different.

The battle for the state representative seat in my district has been characterized by nastiness and mud slinging. If you live here, you’ve likely been deluged by negative mailers and phone calls and television ads- They are literally inescapable and while they certainly have had an impact, I don’t think it’s the kind of impact that the candidates intended. I suppose we’ve all grown used to seeing this kind of dirty campaigning on a national level, but to see it happen here in my own community and involve people that many of us personally know and regularly interact with– it’s just… It’s so disappointing. It’s not how we teach our own children to act. And it’s certainly not reflective of who the people in my community are or what we stand for.

I know my district is far from alone here- Negative campaigns are causing tumult in neighborhoods across the country right now, and I believe many constituents feel exactly the same way that I do. In their efforts to discredit each other, it seems as if too many candidates have lost sight of the people they’re fighting so hard to represent. They’d all do well to remember the words of Maya Angelou: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m not feeling very good about the state of things on this Election Day at all.