You’d seriously have to be living under a rock to not recognize the historic value of the upcoming election.
And American voters are just weeks away from exercising their greatest right on Election Day.
But if you’re considering skipping the polls on Nov. 8 — you better have a good excuse. Let these stories of voters who didn’t let anything — hypothermia, natural disasters or death — get in the way of casting their ballots in 2012 motivate you.
The man who refused to walk into the light
On Election Day 2012 in Michigan, an elderly man died while filling out his absentee ballot with his wife.
“He was dead,” Ty Houston, a registered nurse, told The Detroit News. “He had no heartbeat and he wasn’t breathing.”
Houston said he administered CPR and was able to revive him. “Did I vote?” was the first thing he asked when he regained consciousness.
His wife tried to tell him that his life was more important than his vote, to which he reportedly replied that only two things mattered, “that I love you and that I finish what I came here to do: vote.”
The Sandy evacuees
Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc in New Jersey and New York a week before Election Day, and thousands of buildings that were designated polling stations were destroyed by the Category 3 superstorm.
Hundreds of communities were evacuated, and millions of homes were without heat and electricity. But some displaced residents went to extraordinary lengths to cast their ballots, and many expressed relief they were able vote at all.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie both issued executive orders to allow displaced people to vote at any polling station with provisional ballots. Voting vans and generator-powered tents were also set up as makeshift voting sites in areas that lost power.
The San Diego Tribune reported a 72-year-old man from Long Beach Island, NJ, was evacuated, but drove an hour each way to vote. A 61-year-old man from Queens told the New York Times, “I wasn’t going to let no hurricane stop me from voting.” And a woman from Staten Island told CBS News, “Nothing is more important than voting.”
The rapper who handed out $20s
The Game literally paid people to get to the polls in 2012.
The rapper, whose real name is Jayceon Terrell Taylor, gave out $20 to 500 Hurricane Sandy victims — who’d been hit hard by the hurricane just a week before — to buy gas, or get a train ticket, so they could make it to their polling station.
“Let’s hope that everybody did the right thing,” he told Alexa Chung in an interview, after she asked if he trusted that people actually used the money to help them cast their vote. “You gotta have faith, right?”
The Bostonians who risked hypothermia
Voters in some areas of Boston waited outside in two-hour lines at polls in 2012, braving near-freezing temperatures.
Many polling stations had volunteers who handed out free coffee, hot chocolate and soup. Officials told reporters that the long lines were just a product of too many residents being grouped at a specific location.
“I’ll stand here as long as I have to stand here,” a man who lived in Southie told the Boston Globe. “It’s important to me.”
The woman who was about to have a baby
Galicia Malone, 21, was experiencing contractions five minutes apart when she realized she had to make a pit stop on the way to the hospital. It was 8:30 in the morning on Nov. 6, 2012, and she needed to cast her vote before she gave birth.
“If only all voters showed such determination to vote,” Cook County Clerk David Orr told NBC Chicago. “My hat goes off to Galicia for not letting anything get in the way of voting.”
Malone told CBS Chicago that getting to vote in her first presidential election made “a major difference in my life.” Also, her polling station was the (no joke) New Life Celebration Church.
Not registered yet?
This will be the easiest thing you do all day. You can register at this website, or this website, or this website. You can go here and register with a text message. You can even Google “how to register to vote,” and you’ll find step-by-step instructions specific to your state and separated according to online, mail and in-person. The registration deadline to vote in the 2016 election is Oct. 14.