This is my story of the first time I voted: I woke up on a Monday morning a little bit later than usual because I was not headed to school quite yet. I had a college tour at the College of Charleston at 10:00 a.m.. So my Dad and I decided we should take advantage of my time before my tour, to go to the polls and vote early. I just recently turned 18 and I was super excited that I was going to be able to practice my right to vote as a citizen. We hopped in my Dad’s car around 8:30 a.m. and started to drive towards Seacoast Church. My Dad then turned to me and asked if I had everything I needed to vote. Unfortunately, I realized I did not have my driver’s license so we had to turn around to go back to the house. We were now in a little bit of a time crunch and I was worried we would not make it to my college tour on time. So when we got back to the house I sprinted in, grabbed my license and sprinted back to the car because I needed to make up for lost time.

Now that we were on our way, my Dad and I began to talk about politics. My Dad and I disagree on a lot of stuff regarding politics but we are always able to have a civil and educational conversation. We also looked up a sample ballot on my phone to make sure we knew what to expect. Luckily, we arrived at the polls at 8:50 and the line was not too long. The line moved fairly quickly; it almost felt as though I was standing in line to get onto a Disney ride. It took us about 25 minutes until we reached the station where we showed the poll workers our ID’s, and they handed us a tool to use to press the electronic ballot casting machine, and then they printed our ballot. Then, we were funneled into another line where we stood for about another 5 minutes. Now that I had reached the front of that line, I was escorted to the polling booth where I inserted my ballot and began casting my votes. After I was done I brought my ballot over to the ladies standing near the door and I inserted my ballot with my votes on it into a machine. I snagged an ‘I voted’ sticker, a pump of hand-sanitizer, and walked out the door to meet back up with my dad. To conclude my voting adventure my Dad made me take a picture so that ‘’I could always remember my first time I voted’. Overall I would say I had a pretty good experience voting that only took about 30 minutes.