Recorded in Fort Dodge, Iowa, 2020
This snapshot was gathered in conjunction with the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution and its "Stories from Main Street" initiative. The project is intended to capture Americans' impressions and stories about their small-town and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, and thoughts about American democracy. This story is from a group of narratives inspired by the Smithsonian traveling exhibition, "Voices and Votes: Democracy in America."
"My name is Ruth Bennett, and I was going to go vote for Ronald Reagan at Phillips Middle School at that time. It is now just an apartment building. They had a TV screen in the hallway and we were lined up for some time in a line down the hall trying to get up to vote, when all at once, they showed Reagan saying that he was glad he had won. I forget who he was running against, I'm sorry, at that time. The other guy was saying he had lost and here we're standing in line to vote and we haven't even voted yet. He's already won. Half of the crowd just walked away. Well, why should I vote then if he's already won? I thought it was a mistake for them to have a TV screen sitting there in the room when we were ready to vote, because this made it so not everybody voted that year. They just let what happened happen. That's my story."
Official Portrait of President Ronald Reagan, 1983. Public Domain image.
Asset ID: 8496
