By LaToya Irby

Though we’ve done a lot of candidate analysis, praising our favorites, and bashing our un-favorites, there’s more to this election than whose daughter is pregnant or who’s the biggest celebrity. We all have a story. We all have things that are driving us, the things that will guide your pencil as you cast your votes this November.

I’m a mom. Right now, there’s nothing more important to me than securing my daughter’s future, ensuring the country that she lives in is giving her everything it has to offer. When I vote in this election, I’m voting for my daughter’s future. I’m voting for the future of all children.

I’m voting for more federal funding for healthcare. So many people don’t have access to healthcare because they simply cannot afford it. Basic healthcare, checkups and preventive maintenance, is a right. It is not a privilege.

Medical debt is one of the leading causes of debt and bankruptcy in the United States. If we had better healthcare programs, fewer families would struggle with the weight of debt from medical bills.

I want to stay at home and raise my daughter. Under our current healthcare system, I have three options: pay hundreds of dollars out of pocket each month a insurance premium, pay hundreds of dollars out of pocket for medical visits, bring in a lot less money so she can qualify for Medicaid.

I’m voting for more progressive taxes, people who make more money can afford to pay more money. To stay at home with my daughter, I’d pay double the taxes. Double the taxes and 7 times the health care costs to be a stay at home mom. What a high price.

I’m voting to an end to the war in Iraq. I have a brother in the Armed Forces, who has already been to Iraq and Afghanistan, who could be deployed today if the Army saw fit. I’ve read about John McCain’s experience as a prisoner of war. Though, I’m happy that he made it out alive, I don’t want my brother, or anyone else’s brother, son, father, sister, daughter, or mother to go through that experience.

I voting to end terrorism. Any of us could have been on those fatal flights that crashed on September 11, 2001. My uncle worked in the Pentagon and we didn’t hear from him all that day. Though we hoped for the best, in the backs of our minds, my family dreaded the phone call that could have come. He was blessed to have had a doctor’s appointment that day. There are so many people who’s loved ones were not as fortunate. Our next president needs to make sure a worse version of 9/11 doesn’t occur.

I’m voting for alternative fuel sources. I want my children and their children and their children to be able to drive their cars and power their homes without having to pay disproportionately high costs for them.

I’m voting for a woman’s right to choose. Not because I’m pro-abortion, because I’m not, but because it is a woman’s right to choose, not the governments.

I’m voting for government protection of civil liberties when it comes to sexual orientation, because citizens should have equal rights and the government should protect them.

This election may not be about me, but it’s about people like me. It’s about parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, godparents, brothers and sisters, making a way for the generations that are coming after us. Leave a comment, tell me what are you voting for this election.

This week's previous posts (most recent first): The Cheerful Warrior, The Future of America, America First, The Wreckage, Hurricanes and Elections, Forget the High Road, What This Election is Really About