This year’s election is bringing millions of voters to the polls.
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Some people will be filling out their ballots for the first time, like Bailey Briscoe and Lizzy Williams.
“I waited in line for probably about an hour and 45 minutes and then went into the voting section and filled out my ballot and turned it in,” Williams said.
“After I turned it in, I was like, I walked out of there like hmm, ok! I voted,” Briscoe said.
Williams and Briscoe are seniors at St. Teresa’s Academy, an all-women’s Catholic high school.
Voting was one of the first things on their to-do list this morning.
“I feel like it's a right that we have and we should take advantage of it, because as a U.S. citizen, it's one thing you should do,” Williams said.
“I actually started to get really excited when we were in line because I know that not everyone has an opportunity to vote, especially women,” Briscoe said.
The same women who attended St. Teresa’s Academy back when it first opened in 1866, decades before women won the right to vote.
“It's only been like what, 100 years that we've been allowed to vote,” Briscoe said. “As I got closer to the door, I got more excited, like I can do this. There are a lot of places and people who live in places where they don't have any form of say.”
The oldest school in Kansas City has seen quite a bit of change throughout history, where voices that were once silenced, are now being heard.
“It feels like very important to me and I feel like really excited and blessed to have the opportunity to do this,” Williams said. “Because so many women have not had the opportunities to do this and it's just amazing.”
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“We're going to be living with these decisions that are made in this election a really long time and we're going to be dealing with the repercussions of that,” Briscoe said. “For me, it seems like it's been a big deal because I was a lot younger and I didn't pay as much attention to the other elections, but for this one, since it was so I guess, televised and you heard so much about it, to be like you know what, my first election was the Trump vs. Clinton election.”
Briscoe and Williams say it’s more than just voting for the next President of the United States.
“I was probably surprised how much we have a difference in the vote,” Williams said. “Overall in the big picture, voting for the President, your vote like counts but it's not as important as the local elections. So going in I didn't realize that we have a say in the governor, the secretary of Missouri. I also realized that I should probably vote in the local elections too because there's a bigger impact than I thought before.”
Rae Daniel can be reached at Rae.Daniel@KSHB.com.
