Sandra Oborokumo is spending part of her retirement preaching the virtues of voting to groups of people she worries would otherwise go overlooked – those with an incarceration on their records; residents of nursing homes.
And people experiencing homelessness.
Oborokumo is a former Rock Hill City Councilwoman who has spent much of the last several weeks visiting soup kitchens and city shelters, carrying voter registration forms and slips of paper bedecked with QR codes that point potential registrants to online forms and answer pages.
"They need to know that they matter, that their voices count," Oborokumo said. "They have the right to vote and they should vote. They are citizens of South Carolina."
Her heady message is having a hard time connecting, however. Late on a warm Saturday morning, a week after Tropical Storm Helene doused the city, Oborokumo made the announcement to fewer than two dozen visitors of Bethel Day Shelter that she was there to help register voters. Then she pulled up a chair in the back of the common room and patiently waited for takers, who did not line up.
“Some are really interested,” Oborokumo said of her efforts to help people register. “Some … don't want to be bothered.”
A few weeks earlier, in this room and at other places in Rock Hill, residents experiencing homelessness made that same collective point – some were eager to get to the polls, others were eager to forget the whole thing.
A gentleman asking to be identified as John Doe, for fear that his views would bring him trouble, said that voting in American elections is a waste of time.
“It doesn't matter to me whether you're a Republican or a Democrat,” he said. “No man ─ or perhaps now a woman ─ runs a presidency.”
Doe said politicians lobby to get votes that enable them to set up a cadre of officials who really run the country.
“I don't believe in them,” he said. “It doesn't matter to me if they're Republican or Democrat. I don't believe in them. They are controlling us.”
Luther Banks, who’s been living on the streets for several years, said much the same.
“From what I've seen for as long as I have been living, it didn't matter whether I voted or not,” Banks said. “They want whoever they want in the seat [and] whoever they want in the seat, that's who they're going to put there.”
For Jocelyn Woodard, who aspires to be a writer, this year’s election is enough to get her interested in voting for the first time.
“I’m planning on voting,” Woodard said. “I don't know who I'm going to vote for right now, but I am going more towards [Kamala] Harris.”
Largely, Woodard is leaning Democratic because she said Harris seems to have a better handle on poor communities and people on the lower end of the economic scale. But she also said that Donald Trump could win her vote if she sees evidence that he would do a better job than Harris.
“It's not [about] Republican or Democrat,” she said. “It's, who is able to lead America where they should go?”
Bobby Hall, who’s been living on the streets, in motels, and in shelters since August of 2023, said he’s less concerned with the race for the White House than he is about how rent has gotten out of control in Rock Hill.
Hall, 66, said he earns $750 per month, a combination of money he gets from the federal government and a part-time job at a metal company in town. That doesn’t go far against some of the rents he’s run across.
“I went in and filled out the application,” Hall said of a recent trip to an apartment building in town. “One bedroom, $1,200 a month. If you’re on a fixed income and you only get $750 [per month], how you going to afford it? You're going to have to live out in the streets, like I'm doing now. “
Hall was the only person at Bethel Day Shelter to visit with Oborokumo to register to vote that late Saturday monring. He’s never voted before, but said he wants a say, locally, in who makes decisions that affect people trying to live where the cost of living is shoving them aside.
Michael Montana, who no longer works because of a disability, said he is looking forward to voting for Donald Trump.
“I believe that Trump's policies are the best,” Montana said. “I like lower taxes. I like jobs here back in America. I like how Trump negotiates with other countries and says, ‘No, you're not going to take advantage of us.’”
Montana said he’s always voted and always will. And that he’s willing to die to do so.
“I'm going to fight for my freedom,” he said. “And I'll fight to my death. I don't care how physically incapable I am. And I love America and that's why you vote, man.”
