Recorded from Frostburg, Maryland, 2021.
This snapshot was gathered in conjunction with the Maryland Voices initiative at Maryland Humanities, specifically to supplement the "Voices and Votes: Democracy in America" traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program. This collection, made up of stories of first-time voters between the ages of 18 and 24, showcases the experiences of young people as they wrestled with the 2020 presidential election, issues around social justice, the environment, immigration, and the pandemic. The full collection of stories is available at www.museumonmainstreet.org.
Max Hancock (00:00): Hi, my name is Max Hancock. I use he, him, his pronouns. I'm from the Annapolis region of Maryland, but when I moved off to college, it was to Frostburg, and the shift of cultures there was really weird for me.
Max Hancock (00:20): I'm a transgender man, and I always thought that Annapolis would be about as good as it gets because it's a pretty wealthy area near the state capitol and right by Baltimore and Washington. A lot of people told me I was actually going to get hate crime when I moved up to Frostburg, which is in rural western Maryland, but it actually ended up being more of a community than I had ever experienced before really; a lot stronger, a lot healthier. I felt really at home. So I was really excited to cast my first vote from within Allegany County.
Max Hancock (00:59): I did vote for the first time in 2020. Definitely a weird way to end a very bizarre year. I did use a mail-in ballot just because I don't want to be running around, getting breathed on by people at the voting booth. I did drive a bunch of my friends, my frat brothers actually, to go vote on voting day. We originally went a couple of weeks before just to get the early voting done because we thought there wouldn't be as many people there.
Max Hancock (01:32): Me and my friend [Sidney 00:01:35] piled into my junky little car, we drive all the way down to Cumberland, which is kind of a hike. It's not a fun drive. When we made it down there, we didn't realize the line would be as long as it was. I'm not a very good driver. We realized the line was super long. We didn't have time to wait in line to vote, so I just had to turn around and leave again and make the drive all the way back up into the mountains. Meanwhile, my driving is horrendous. I was awkwardly trying to make a three-point turn in the voting center parking lot while, for some reason, just about everyone I had matched with on Tinder in the last month was there on that day, so they all saw me make this terrible little U-turn, almost hit an election sign. It was very action-packed, to say the least.
Max Hancock (02:29): It didn't feel as big of a deal as I know that it absolutely was. I've been politically active for quite some time, but that was my first time participating directly in this process of democracy that theoretically makes America a pretty good place to be. But just with the political circumstances I was casting my vote in, it felt like it was a symbolic gesture more than anything else.
Asset ID: 2021.03.13.c
