Meet a Voter: John from Michigan
Independent
John considers himself an independent or moderate voter.
This post is part of a Q&A series with voters who have volunteered
to share their perspectives leading up to the November 2024 election.
Political Perspective
For at least the past 20 years John has described himself as an independent and has demonstrated that by voting for candidates of both parties. If you went back even further, you would find that John consistently voted for more-conservative candidates, but in recent years he has ended up choosing the more liberal ones.
John supposes you could also label him as moderate, as he tends to prefer the candidates who are not at either extreme. In Michigan you can vote a “straight ticket” (i.e., all one party) but he has never done that. Maybe that is because he is not a “joiner” – he has no interest in joining a political party. John is much more interested in joining a cause. John could also be described as independent from that perspective in that he wants to draw his own conclusions. John guesses he is not a very trusting person.
John likes to vote absentee, because it gives him an opportunity to see exactly what will be on the ballot and do some research on who the candidates are.
Background
John is in his 60s and describes himself as semi-retired. He doesn’t have a day job, but he still occasionally takes on a building renovation design project as he has maintained his Professional Engineer license. He attended college and has a Mechanical Engineering degree and also a Master’s degree in business. John started out as an Environmental Engineer for General Motors, but shifted to strategy consulting. And now he is an Architectural Engineer.
John devotes many hours as a volunteer for the Science Olympiad organization in his community, serving as a Tournament Director, and as the primary person who finds sponsors for the program. He would not be surprised if he spends 40 hours a week on that.
John likes to read history (“read” means listen these days) and is almost exclusively a non-fiction reader. He has been on a biography bent in recent years, including many of our past presidents. John recently finished Churchill and is now on to Robert Oppenheimer. He likes to think that learning how they dealt with the problems of the past gives him more perspective on our current challenges.
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