During the past few visits to our local post office, Charles greets me with, “Have you voted yet?” He is the branch manager for this location and loves America. He questions me with every visit about some aspect of being from the U.S. He would give anything to go there for a job opportunity so he could send financial support back to his family here. He knows a tremendous amount about U.S. politics. He just follows on-line news. He’s never been out of Uganda but he sees promise and opportunity in the United States.
Scott and I finally figured out how to vote while oversees and we submitted our votes just last week.
We had to go on-line, print out an “overseas ballot” application and mail it back to the U.S. with U.S. postage. We sent it back with a friend who was travelling. A couple of weeks later we received an email with specific instructions for submitting our ballot. We had to print it out, scan it and then send it to a designated email.
Every state has different requirements, but thanks to a recently created What’s App thread for the nearly 15,000 Americans who live in Uganda we were ablet to sort out the specifics pretty easily. It’s been great to follow along as Americans across Uganda submit their ballots for the Nov. 5th Election. Many American's have had to drive hours to submit their ballots directly to the U.S. Embassy in Kampala to be deposited in the diplomatic pouch to be mailed in the U.S.
Besides the privilege of voting, the biggest joy in this process has been my conversations with Charles and Kristine at the post office. This week, I took in a copy of my completed ballot. Since no one really visits the post office, we spent about an hour to go through the ballot. Charles had so many observations:
Why were there so many names on the Presidential ballot? “No one knows these other people!” (Other than Harris or Trump)
The Initiative Process in Washington – We have 4 “People’s Initiatives” on the ballot. Charles was fascinated that citizens were able to challenge the actions of our legislatures by starting petitions, gathering signatures and then letting citizens vote on the issues. Nothing like this exists in Uganda.
Voting for Judges – In Uganda, all judges are appointed by the President and the Judicial Commission. Charles was amazed that U.S. Citizens get to choose their judges.
The ballot was all digitized – this looked so much more official than a Ugandan ballot.
We talked about taxes, citizen’s choice, and all kinds of issues – the push toward electricity vs. gas in the U.S. is similar to the push away from charcoal to gas for households here. Charcoal is cheaper and preferred by nearly every Ugandan even though charcoal is terrible for the environment and strips forests. At the same time, most Ugandans can’t afford gas/propane or the necessary equipment to use it.
Charles has many strong opinions that are pretty typical of most Ugandan’s. He and Kristine are also anticipating the 2026 Ugandan election where it’s likely that the current president will run again to continue beyond his current 35 years as president. Several terms ago, the Ugandan constitution was changed to allow him to continue running.
They wanted to hold my copy of the ballot. Kristina was a bit upset that I only had one copy and not two for each of them to hold one. (See the picture of above.)
May more Americans value the power of their vote. My Ugandan friends would change places with us at any time.
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