The "Why I Voted" Project: Real people explain their votes

Voting's a pain.

You have to take off time from work...wait in line...study up on candidates whose positions seem impossible to pin down.

Meanwhile economists and statisticians busy themselves every year explaining just how meaningless any one vote really is.

And yet record numbers of Americans turned out to vote in this year's historic national election all last week and yesterday. Why?

Having heard quite enough from the pundits this season, we decided to ask actual American voters on their way out of Chicago polling places. We're calling this the "Why I Voted" project.

Tania Karas (our intrepid intern) and I interviewed 22 people outside of polling places in the
Chicago area.

• We spoke to seven people in Evanston during early voting.
• We interviewed 11 people on Chicago's South Side in Barack Obama's neighborhood of Hyde Park on election day.
• We interviewed four more people at a polling place in the Loop.

Our sample was in no way representative or scientifically chosen. We spent an hour at each polling place and asked everyone who came out if they'd take a crack at our question. Just 6 people turned us down. Our group consisted of 20 self-declared democrats and two independent voters. You'll hear the word "change" in many of the responses. Several of the voters in Hyde Park said they'd met or knew Barack Obama. Several of the people we interviewed in Hyde Park were students at the University of Chicago. The people we spoke to in the Loop were young professionals (they were also in much more of a hurry!).

We asked everyone the same question: "Why'd you vote?" and followed up on any interesting things they said.

While you will hear some boilerplate responses about "being a good citizen" you'll also hear from an ex-Oregonian who was thrilled to be able to cast a ballot in person (Oregon votes by mail), an Obama volunteer who didn't want to miss out on a stake in history and a pair of beaming first-time voters dripping with enthusiasm on their way out of the polling place.

You can watch, discuss, rate and share their video responses with your friends over on the project page. And if you want to dive into the action, you can even submit your own answer to the question by uploading a video to youtube and filling out the form here.

This year's election will be analyzed and picked apart for decades
to come. Future generations will look back and wonder just why the
country got so jazzed up to hit the polls. We hope this project sheds some light on what drove Americans to vote in 2008.

Every vote's got a story behind it. Let's hear yours.

The "Why I Voted" Project