Rachel Hubbard
Having worked in news and as a political observer in Oklahoma for decades, as elections approach, I often get calls from friends and family asking for my thoughts. During the 2020 cycle, a woman I know well pulled me aside in the grocery store. “Rachel, I’m embarrassed,” she said. “I registered to vote years ago. I’ve driven to my polling place multiple times, but I’ve never gone inside.” I tried to keep my mouth from gaping open as this perfectly intelligent woman told me that she hadn’t gone inside because she was nervous that she would be mocked for never voting. She was worried that she would struggle to fill out her ballot, and someone there would know she didn’t know what she was doing.
Rotary is a civic organization. By the nature of our participation, we are civically engaged citizens, but that is not true of our state as a whole.
According to data from the 2022 midterms and the 2022 Harvard Cooperative Election Study, voting and other forms of civic engagement including those described above are lower in Oklahoma than the rest of the country. This includes contacting public officials, attending community meetings, volunteering and making charitable contributions.
Perhaps, you are like me, and you have looked around and wondered why Oklahoma’s civic participation rate is so anemic.
Maybe it’s because of uncompetitive races. Maybe it’s the effect of social media. Maybe it’s generational apathy. It may be a combination of all of these things and many more, but I would like to pose another theory.
I had great civic role models. I watched my parents and grandparents vote, campaign, write letters in support of new stoplights and attend meetings at the state legislature.
My theory is that we need to be those civic role models in our community. We can demystify the process of participating in city and county government processes, voting and more. We can provide an on ramp for our neighbors who are immigrants and those who didn’t grow up with parents who modeled civic engagement.
Sometimes, it takes a neighbor or a friendly face to show you the ropes and point you in the right direction for information.