SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — Voting booths stood beside children’s play equipment in the gym at PEACE Inc.’s Head Start preschool on Tuesday morning.
Kenneth Hills, 44, was among the early arrivals. An area manager at an Amazon distribution center in Liverpool, he had just finished a night shift.
“You cannot have a conversation with someone about politics and the differences if you don’t get out there and go vote,” Hills said. “You can disagree with things, but if you haven’t made any attempt to change it, better it, or at least better understand it, then we are just having a conversation and it’s just fodder.”
Wayne Grevelding, a retired New York State Thruway Authority worker preparing for a fall hunting trip, offered a different piece of advice: Listen to politicians, but question their promises.
“Don’t believe all of it,” he said. “They can stand up there and tell you they are going to give you the world, and when they get into office, they can’t give you the world because it’s not theirs to give.”
Anne-Margaret Childress, an adjunct in African American studies at Syracuse University who also works in grant administration at Onondaga Community College, said she voted to help her community.
“We as individuals, need to elect officials who can support what we as a community need to have done,” she said. “We all say we want change but to get change we need to vote, we need to make ourselves heard.”
The voters we spoke with this morning encouraged residents who were unsure about voting to get out and exercise their right to vote before the polls close at 9.
