When I look back on the “My Life. My Vote.” series, it’s really difficult to pin down the exact moment when we knew what shape this project would take. I know the genesis lies within conversations I had with Alan Lowe, the executive director of the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy. It probably wasn’t anything more specific than “we should do something together.” After all, the Baker Center’s mission to educate and inform is quite similar to the News Mission we have here at WUOT.

Alan brought his Baker Center colleague Amy Gibson, director of development and policy research, into the mix and the three of us held several brainstorming sessions in the spring. It was important to all of us that any project would be apolitical—neither the Baker Center nor WUOT is in the business of advancing anyone’s political agenda. We also knew we wanted to produce something that would illustrate the profound significance of that one simple act—voting.

The project began to take on a life of its own when we realized the best way to tell this story is through the words of our friends and neighbors right here in Tennessee. We set out to find eight different people whose strong attitudes about voting were shaped by their unique life experiences.

In the meantime, we decided that the uncut interviews could serve as a remarkably valuable and candid resource for researchers and scholars studying attitudes about our democratic process. The first eight interviews will form the cornerstone of a research archive at the Baker Center; ultimately, the Baker Center would like to have at least 100 such interviews catalogued in the archive.

This project would not be possible without the generous assistance of countless people. I will attempt to acknowledge them here, but I guarantee that I’m missing someone:

Marie Alcorn Mike Arms Anne Buckle Dave Conklin Jonathon Cox David Dunkirk Michael Fitzgerald Amy Gibson Sarah Moore Greene Marvin Hatcher Matilda Hatfield Nancy Heintz Monica Hernandez

Jeremy Jennings Vandy Kemp Alan Lowe Gavin Luter Jack McElroy Michelle Powell Patricia Robledo John Sibley Mihai Smighelschi Stephanie Smith Audrey Stelson Loida Velazquez LaTravia Williams

And special thanks to Marika Olsen

I hope you enjoy listening to “My Life. My Vote.” as much as we’ve enjoyed producing it.

Matt Shafer Powell
News Director, WUOT