When the clock struck midnight, marking my 18th birthday, I registered to vote.
Months later, standing in my voting booth in the 2026 midterms, it felt like every open letter I’ve ever written, every door I’ve ever knocked, every potential voter I’ve ever spoken to has been building to this moment. As the names on the ballot stared back at me, the room felt so much quieter than I thought it would.
I was raised by politically engaged parents and worked as an activist and organizer in Tennessee during high school. Since I was 8, I’ve wanted to vote to create the world I dream of.
My first vote felt much bigger than a ballot, and so has the blue wave that followed. To me, both represented progress on the issues I’ve worked toward for years – the right
to be safe in schools, the right to protest without fear of retribution, the rights of immigrants and the strength of our democracy.
Gen Z is voting for the America we deserve
I voted to create a reality where kids don’t have to fear being shot in school, and where there’s meaningful legislation to stop gun violence. This issue is part of what drew me to organize my first rally in 10th grade, three years before I could vote. It propelled me over the next two years to meet with legislators, write petitions, march and, in my junior year, help organize a rally in response to the Antioch High School shooting.
It was the second school shooting in Nashville while I was in high school – and a tragedy that’s become all too familiar to American teenagers.
I voted for the students who died in those shootings – Josselin Corea Escalante, 16, and 9-year-olds Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs. I voted for a future where we don’t have to go through active shooter drills, metal detectors and armed guards at school entryways.
I voted to protect the immigrants who make our country vibrant, and who’ve been unjustly demonized by this administration, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers attempting mass deportations of undocumented residents in Minneapolis, Chicago, New York and other cities.
During the Nashville ICE raids in May 2025, almost 200 people were arrested in one week. Some students stopped going to school.
Wanting to do something, I sat in a shaded corner of downtown Nashville that spring, facilitating an interview between a local journalist and a student willing to speak about her family's fears of being targeted. She spoke about how scared she was and her determination to build a better future.
I voted for the right to protest without fear
I filled out my ballot because the right to protest without fear is a cornerstone of democracy. That right was frayed when observers Renee Good and Alex Pretti were fatally shot by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis. In January, I sat in the corner of a Michael’s, putting together bracelet-making kits for a walking art display honoring Good’s memory.
I voted for legislators who will advocate for fair elections. The final protest I participated in before I left Nashville for college was against a new, even more gerrymandered congressional map that Tennessee proposed and passed – as also happened in Texas, Florida and other states recently. I voted because gerrymandering is a race to the bottom.
I lost a lot of battles as a high school organizer. Still, one of the protests I organized captures why I feel so lucky to have finally been able to vote: It was called “Our Dream for a Better Tennessee.” I haven’t stopped dreaming, not since I was arguing with my parents over the dinner table about issues from feminism to foreign policy.
The silence of the voting booth is so different from the arguments and rallies that made me who I am, but my ballot helped usher in something historic.
The time for my generation to create the world we’ve been imagining has arrived, like, to quote Dolly Parton, "the light of a clear blue morning."
Emmie Wolf-Dubin is a Robertson Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a former editorial director at the Nashville SUNN. She has been published more than 50 times and was a 2026 recipient of the Diller Tikkun Olam Award for her political organizing in Tennessee. This opinion column was produced in partnership with the Students United News Network (SUNN), which connects student newsrooms across the country and publishes the first nationwide student newspaper, The SUNN Post.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: I'm a first-time voter in the South. We're just getting started | Opinion
