Gloria Jean Matzig prepares to enact the presidential elections this year by casting an absentee ballot from Germany, where she has actually lived for greater than 30 years. It will be her 10th time ballot by mail.
That is, as she says, “if all works out”.
The 72-year-old independent voter was born in Pineville, Kentucky, and also has actually moved around quite a bit over the years. Her family moved to 20 different suburban areas by the time she was in fourth grade, prior to ultimately working out in Fairborn, Ohio, when they could pay for a residence. Her daddy, like virtually everybody else in your area, helped General Motors, while her mother operated in the snack bar at her neighborhood secondary school.
After 2 marriages and also having actually invested numerous chapters of her life living in a range of cities across the nation, including almost everywhere from Denver in Colorado to Burlington in Vermont, Matzig settled with her loved one, who she has actually been with given that 1988, in Aachen, Germany.
” I’ll possibly die in Germany since the medical insurance in America runs out my economic reach,” she claims.
As a young spouse, Matzig signed up as a Republican under her very first other half’s impact, she claims, before she changed to end up being an independent citizen. She has actually elected both Republican and also Democratic governmental candidates, from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton– each time depending on both the German and the American postal systems.
” My ballots were provided safely and firmly whenever,” she claims.
This year, Matzig says she’s “exceptionally concerned” concerning freshly announced adjustments to the US Postal Service (USPS). We spoke shortly after Donald Trump assigned a brand-new postmaster basic, Louis DeJoy, a significant Republican benefactor with no experience in the postal service. DeJoy has announced sweeping modifications to the USPS in advance of the November vote, including cutting overtime hours for lots of employees and also withholding mail if regional message workplaces are understaffed.
” DeJoy has actually just recently established some new treatments in position which I’m sure are designed– as well as maybe even were proposed by Trump’s White House staff– to decrease distribution of the United States mail,” Matzig states, “consequently jeopardizing the whole American election procedure.”
She plans to support former vice head of state Joe Biden in his proposal to unseat Trump, citing the Republican incumbent’s “negative leadership, mismanagement … as well as despicable personality type” displayed throughout his period in the Oval Office. She worries about the security of electing under Trump, at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has already killed even more than 165,000 Americans and shows up to be getting worse in some states.
Matzig states the alleged “calculated reduce brought on by new treatments and also spending plan restrictions” established by DeJoy “might sabotage our November election by reducing deliveries and then calling tallies too late to be counted”.
But the independent citizen additionally stresses over other issues she views as having actually been exacerbated under Trump, from the toll war with China to GOP-led attacks on healthcare accessibility for millions of Americans.
Matzig was disturbed regarding the president’s organized photo ops amidst serene demonstrations in Washington DC earlier this year, in which she says Trump made use of “faith as a political device” after an event of “teargassing as well as forcibly eliminating peaceful protesters by government agents”.
Still, she states, perhaps most importantly, her primary worry is guaranteeing every American has a safe and secure way to vote come November.
” It has never in the past in the whole history of the USA been more crucial than it is now for Americans to be allowed to vote by mailing in their ballots to their neighborhood boards of election,” she claims. “Even in times of both globe wars, people were constantly able to securely send in their votes– from our abroad armed forces workers, and also American expats everywhere, for example.”
Matzig wraps up: “Because of the extreme threat of contracting the infection, all Americans need to be able to rely on the United States Postal Service as well as ballot by mail.”