October 22, 2024
Some of the approximately 47,000 people in Georgia’s majority-Black and impoverished Bibb County may not turn out to vote because they believe their material conditions don’t change no matter who is president.
In 2020, nearly 67% of eligible voters cast ballots, the highest presidential election turnout in the last 120 years. However, that also means approximately 80 million Americans did not vote in that year’s election.
According to NPR, some reasons non-voters gave for not voting included not being registered to vote, not being interested in voting, not liking the candidates, disillusionment with voting, and indecision about who to vote for.
In 2024, some voters in Georgia, a battleground state in this election, have expressed some of those same concerns to The Associated Press.
According to the AP, some of the approximately 47,000 people in Georgia’s majority-Black and impoverished Bibb County may not turn out to vote because they believe their material conditions don’t change no matter who is president.
As Sabrina Friday, the executive director of Mother’s Nest, an organization that provides baby supplies, training, food, and housing to needy mothers, told the outlet, “When a mom is in a hotel room and there [are] six or seven people in two beds and her kids are hungry, and she just lost the car, she doesn’t want to hear too much about elections,” Friday told the AP. “She wants to hear how you can help.”
Linda Solomon highlighted Friday’s concerns. She told the AP that neither she nor her daughter planned to vote in the upcoming election because “nothing changes” regardless of which political party is in the White House. “Why are you going to vote, and ain’t nobody doing nothing?”
Although Vice President Harris’ campaign has focused solidly on the middle class, it has primarily ignored voters like Solomon, which Elise Sampson, a 20-year-old political science major at Atlanta’s Spelman College, highlighted in her comments to the AP.
“It comes down to an accessibility issue,” Sampson said. “When people don’t feel heard and represented, it is hard to want to participate in a political system that doesn’t hear and represent you.”
According to 19th News, caregivers and single mothers have effectively been disenfranchised. However, some organizations are trying to eliminate barriers that have barred those groups from political participation.
One of those organizations is the Chamber of Mothers, a nonpartisan group that advocates for mothers in 33 states. The group is working diligently to change the nonparticipation of single mothers. Chamber of Mothers has created a voter education website that lets mothers pre-fill their ballots, saving mothers precious time.
According to Erin Erenberg, the group’s co-founder and executive director, “What is consistent among these moms is that they are exhausted, they feel dismissed by the political process, they are overwhelmed, and they feel frozen about how to engage.”
Erenberg continued, “When you’re depending on the most overwhelmed, the most exhausted group of folks to fix the system for themselves, that is incredibly hard to sustain.” Erenberg told 19th News. “Very often, we rely on the people who are harmed to undo and fix the harm. I’m grateful to be in a moment where moms are banding together and insisting that our concerns become a priority. I just think that we’re sort of at the beginning of that wave.”
According to AP Votecast, whose data was collected by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs and Research, most non-voters in 2020 were poor, young, less educated, unmarried, or minorities.
According to the AP, that data suggests that people who live below the poverty line make up a large portion of non-voters. This certainly seems to be the case with Solomon, who informed the AP that she won’t cast a ballot because she feels forgotten.
“If you ain’t got nothing, nobody has time for you whether you are Black or white. If you’re poor, you’re poor, and they ain’t got time,” Solomon said.
Levita Carter, a 55-year-old teacher and church member at Unionville Missionary Baptist Church, echoed those concerns, but she emphasized that participation in local voting is more important and impactful for the folks using Mother’s Nest.
“Our children are coming to school hungry,” Carter told the AP. “They don’t have sufficient food. They don’t have sufficient clothing.”
Carter concluded, “Our vote counts right here. We need to start small in our town and our place and get some people in place right here that can affect change here before we can even get to voting for president.”
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