By Elaine Carlson

At the Primary Election I voted at the polling place. I know absentee voting is just as valid, but, somehow I feel more like I am "really" voting when I wait for election day and have to travel across town to be able to vote.

Just after eleven in the morning I make it to the Grant County Administration Center – the single polling place in Silver City. As I started to walk to the end of the line a woman told me to get in front of her. I ask if people will be mad at me for cutting in. The man behind her said no. And that he had been thinking of telling me to get in front of him.

The woman says she is going to go up to the front and tell one of their workers about me. Soon she is coming back with a man. He leads me to the second spot in the line. He says he can get me a chair to sit on if I want one. I say yes and he leaves. Pretty quickly he comes back with a chair. And I sit down. Just as the line starts to move the guy is back, and he helps me get up, and he takes the chair to the next spot.

I am glad they didn't oust the guy in the first spot and put me there. Being in the second spot is really nice. I am physically disabled, and I am always awed by the efforts people make to help me accommodate my disability. But I also usually feel a tinge of discomfort—I worry that it is wrong to act as if I expect special treatment just because I am disabled.

Overall, I am happy that our society has recognized the difficulty some disabled have when attempting to exercise their right to vote–and taking steps to make voting easier (and possible) for everyone. But this sensitivity has not always existed.

When I was growing up, I knew a woman who wasn't able to go into the polling places because she was in a wheelchair. When she would go to vote someone would take a ballot outside and give it to her (I am talking about the time from the 1950s through the 1970s). Then everyone would turn their backs to make sure she had privacy, and so no one would see how she voted.

When I am let in to vote the first thing, I do is to ask for a list of the Write-In Candidates. A woman tells me they don't have such a list and adds, "People are supposed to know how to spell the name of the person they want to write in."

Actually, I knew name of the write-in candidate and how to spell it. I wanted to write in Karen Whitlock, but I didn't know which position she was seeking. The next day I was happy when a friend told me she had won. I should have done some research before I left the house in the morning.

Ever since I was first allowed to vote (in the Richard Nixon and George McGovern contest in 1972) I have liked the idea of voting. For a few minutes each time I pretend that my views really matter and that my voting will be important to the outcome.

Soon it will be the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment ( it prohibits the denial of the right to vote based on sex). It became law on August 26, 1920. It is a little sad that now our current health crisis puts major limits on our ability to celebrate American women getting the right to vote. I just hope that the celebration is not completely closed down.

When I was a child, I enjoyed listening to my grandmother tell about the first time she voted. She voted for Woodrow Wilson because he said, "I kept the country out of war." Then of course he led us into the Great War being fought in Europe (later referred to as World War I). Well he certainly wasn't the first or even the last (my guess!) politician to break a campaign promise.

Now I hope a group of my readers don't want to gang up on me and remind me that the election that gave Woodrow Wilson his second term happened before the 19th Amendment became law --- November 7, 1916 was the date of that election.

I just want to remind people that voting procedures were then (and still are) left to the states to set. Before that amendment the eligibility of women to vote was included in the matters that were left to the states to decide. At the time my Grandmother lived in Nevada, which had already given women the right to vote.

Now that so much of the news is focused on the upcoming election, I enjoy seeing all of the speculation about how the current president is going to do. Will Trump be just like Herbert Hoover and Gerald Ford and miss out on continuing to be president after the current term is over?

A lot of people have opinions and guesses and predictions of what will happen but now I really look forward to seeing how things turn out.