Hi Eli,

I’m 20, so this is my first presidential election. I filled out my absentee ballot while home this weekend (my hometown is only about 100 miles from UMass Amherst, where I go to school). I hadn’t been planning on voting for Obama; instead, I had planned on voting for Cynthia McKinney, hoping to send a message to the Democrats to move just a little further to the left. Massachusetts is a safe blue state, after all. However, when it came time to fill in the bubble, I realized that I wanted to be able to tell my children that I cast my first presidential ballot for this historic candidate, and so I filled in the bubble next to “Obama-Biden.”

I’m voting for Obama because I’ve been afraid that my generation has been cheated out of the American Dream; Barack Obama has given me hope that maybe we can reclaim it.

-Dan from MA

Send a letter about your voting experience here.