DECATUR, Ga. — It's heard every election season: your voice is your vote.
It's a reminder that behind every vote is real a person who had a reason to cast their ballot.
Candidates are spending money on polling and staff to try to decipher the Georgia electorate.
But nothing beats a face-to-face conversation.
Meet Daphne Dail, small business owner and artist
Daphne Dail is the co-owner of MudFire Studios & Gallery in Decatur. Dail has been operating the small business for more than a decade.
"Mudfire is, at its very core, a community space for folks who are pursuing an education in clay," Dail said. "Everybody can come in and kind of interact with the work and hopefully fall in love with a piece that they can take home."
Dail explained that the main studio space serves about 250 members and employs around 20 staffers.
"They come in as strangers," Dail said, "but they make lifelong friendships."
Issues she cares about
Reproductive healthcare
Dail explained that reproductive healthcare is one of the issues she cares most about this election season.
"You cannot say that you care about people but then take away their ability to access healthcare," she said. "That's a massive one for me."
LGBTQ+ rights
For Dail, reproductive healthcare also flows into human rights.
"I think that the LGBTQ community is routinely used as a punching bag to create laws and rules around controlling that community," Dail said.
Dail's take on this 2024 election season:
"I think what always worries me is how disconnected we can become from that idea that the point of politics, the foundational purpose of politics, is to caretake for one another," Dail said.
Dail is worried about how identities and lived experiences can be used to as a wedge issue to divide people. Referencing her identity as part of the LGBTQ+ community, she said she's already seen it happen.
"I think that being a part of a marginalized community, we're kind of very familiar with being used as a divisive football," she explained.
Though politics can at times feel frustrating, Dail said she's optimistic about the next generation of voters and their potential to use modern communication tools as a means to connect with each other.
"I am hopeful that future generations are able to increase our digital media literacy and kind of circumnavigate some of the negative impacts of social media and use it for connecting with one another in a real and supportive way," she said.
Leveraging new ways to reach one another, Dail said it's creating space for people to speak and listen to one another.
"I think I'm most optimistic about the communication that's happening between folks," Dail said.
Watch our Voice of the Voter segment during The Georgia Vote Sundays at 11 a.m. on WXIA.