Insight into Politics in Wales

I’m on a rugby tour in Wales. (The photo from my about page is from the tour!) After our last game yesterday, my teammates and I attended a festival for the team in Brecon. I was happy and jubilant, but also quite sore and a little tired. And while I was waiting in line at the concession stand, a man approached me, asking about my accent. I confirmed his suspicions of my American identity and gave a “wild” guess that he was Welsh (I was right!). What I would never have expected was that this small interaction would soon turn into a full-blown political discussion.

After we got our drinks, he and I headed for the entrance of the festival tent. He told me he was a farmer, and described some of the struggles of being one, especially now. Whether it was droughts because of the intense heat, long work days, or endless chores, the life of the farmer didn’t seem pretty. At the same time, though, he heavily emphasized how much he loved being a farmer. I asked him about certain ways to make life easier, and his very first answer was voting. He took voting extremely seriously, he said, and even though he only counted as one vote, to make sure he stayed in business he had to vote for the right candidate and policies that would benefit the agricultural aspects of Wales. 

This conversation opened my eyes once again to my goal. There are people in both Wales and America who rely on voting, and yet many Americans either do not care about voting or do not know where to start. And although America isn’t agriculturally-driven as it was 300 years ago, there are different aspects of American life that need fixing. It even made me question whether the voting process itself was outdated in America—that maybe changing the way we vote or gather information about a candidate could influence more citizens to vote. I hope that when the website is up and running that it will do just that!