Impact Feature Issue on Political Activism and Voter Participation by Persons with Intellectual and/or Developmental Disabilities

They say I can’t vote.

They say the decision is not mine.

They say I don’t understand.

I guess they think they’re being kind.

I wonder what they would say or think if they only knewthat when they call the President “Our President,”

  

I want to call him mine, too.

If I never get the chance to vote –

pulling the lever, punching the card or writing his name down –

I stay the same – dumb, misinformed, unchanged, unempowered.

That is what this world expects me to be.

   

But I want so much more!!!

I want to be the most educated – the most informed –

the most totally changed – the most totally empowered person I can be when I vote.

I can make a difference and then I can say with pride,

“Not yours,

not theirs,

but my President

because I helped put him there.”