Hey folks!
If you’re like me, something happens in your life and that reminds you of something else that happened in your life a while further back, which reminds you of something else that you haven’t thought about in longer than you realized.
That happened to me yesterday.
I started the day off by voting. I’ve shared this with plenty of people, but voting by mail or early in-person is absolutely fine and also absolutely safe. I sometimes feel a weird sense of superstition about doing that, and also feel excitement around the idea of being in-person on election day and being a part of something bigger than myself.
I think that lack of access to voter registration and the right to vote is a massive issue. And it’s only going to be a bigger issue for us moving forward in Ohio, since the Republicans convinced enough people to pass a hugely restrictive new voter ID amendment to our constitution (even though we already had one of the strictest voter ID requirements in the entire country already on the books). But ya know, people in power will do all kinds of things that are unethical and unfair and unjust and shady and downright evil to try and preserve that power, while justifying it to themselves by saying “we have to stop THEM from doing…something”. It’s a hugely frustrating dynamic which will become very apparent as we have to struggle to deal with this new ridiculous law moving forward in this state.
What we need is universal voter registration. Opt-out voter registration. When you reach sixteen, you’re registered to vote. Period. The end. Our system is designed to make it as difficult and complicated as possible to get registered and to vote, so that a very small proportion of our citizens have an outsized say in what happens in this country. That’s just a fact.
Going back seven or eight years, I was teaching a graduate-level Social Welfare Policy class at Case Western that regularly included Ellen Anderson’s excellent book One Person, No Vote as a required text. That book takes you through how safe and secure our US election system is, how rarely voter fraud occurs, and how those in power controlling access to who gets to vote is a major civil rights issue. The idea that our elections aren’t secure and that voter fraud is common came from Donald Trump and his party’s attempts to delegitimize the truth, so that they can replace the truth with whatever they say is the truth. And our election system was a sad casualty of that fraud, unfortunately.
All of that came back to me yesterday when I went to my polling place and cast my votes. So did the fact that I was so proud of Dr. Amy Acton for how far she’s come. Not just in this campaign, but in her life. That reminded me of how angry I was, midway through the summer of 2025, about some of the comments I had been seeing about Dr. Acton and her lack of suitability as a potential Democratic nominee for Ohio’s governor. People were saying awful stuff about her, and a lot of it came back to misogyny (the whole “nobody will vote for a women, so let’s not run one” argument). That, and the fact that she had a high-profile role in Ohio’s COVID response, which was one of the best statewide approaches anywhere in the country in the early stage of the pandemic.
I had gotten so frustrated and fed-up at the well-meaning but WRONG people (especially Democrats) who kept making public statements that Dr. Acton couldn’t possibly win. That, in combination with the SB1 recall petition efforts I was a part of that summer, combined to make me want some kind of a platform for my long-form arguments about things like this stuff.
I really, really wanted to be able to make the case for why Dr. Amy Acton would be an excellent gubernatorial nominee, why Vivek Ramaswamy was the worst possible candidate to face off against her, and why people needed to support her campaign. So I started this Substack, in large part as a vehicle to (hopefully) get people to think more deeply about things they can do to get involved and make a real difference in their lives and the lives of those they care about.
In August of 2025, I wrote this long piece about why Dr. Amy Acton was a fantastic choice for governor of my state, and urged people to consider some of the reasons why she should have their support.
And last night, Dr. Acton became the first woman Ohio has ever elected governor of our state.
I’m really, really glad that it played out the way I thought it would way back in the summer of 2025. I’m also so, so sad that Kellie wasn’t here to see it happen. She was beyond thrilled at the thought of Dr. Acton winning the governor’s race in Ohio, and agreed with me that she could win a lot more easily than the naysayers thought. We were right, and you can go back and read my original Substack post for some of the reasons why she’s going to make an incredible governor.
I’m excited about so many election results from this week, but Dr. Acton’s win is the biggest deal to me of them all.
That’s what I’ve been thinking about. How each of us plant seeds all the time, even without knowing when they’ll sprout or what they’ll ultimately grow into. Kellie was passionate about Dr. Acton, lots of us were. And now she’s our governor-elect. If we don’t allow ourselves to get excited about something, even if other people say it’s far-fetched, then we never put in any of the work to make that thing happen. So it doesn’t. And then the bad guys win. In Ohio, last night, relatively few of the bad guys won (though a few of the WORST local bad guys did, in fact). That’s because more people believed in the idea of something different, and put in the energy to make that thing happen. That’s planting seeds and nurturing them until they grow. That’s the work.
I had an excellent massage, followed by an excellent guava margarita with Lindsay. We had a great conversation, which continued to make me beyond grateful to have her in my life. Because I have so many wonderful people in my life, and they’re here because they want to be (not because I’ve tricked them into caring about me). Reminding myself of that is sort of a constant battle in my brain.
My day today started at 8am and didn’t end until close to 6:30pm. I’m worn out and pretty exhausted from the election coverage. But I’m hopeful, and that’s a big deal to me.
The biggest reason it’s such a big deal is that today marks seven months (twenty-eight weeks) since the day Kellie died. I was so busy with everything I had to get done that I only spent much time thinking about that fact for a few minutes here and there, rather than having it underlie everything in my day. That’s a blessing, because those days are not pleasant.
Thanks for being here, thanks for caring, and thanks for planting those seeds. Keep at it. Every single one is worth it, even the ones that never sprout (because that makes us more prepared when the next planting season rolls around!)
XOXO,
Matt