I didn't vote for Jimmy Carter in 1976.

[La Coliniere]

61. I regret not voting for Carter either and I was a registered Democrat.

I had just turned 18 and it was my first vote. I was naïve and foolish. It was Carter’s religious nature that kind of turned me off. Most of my family here in NYS were long time liberals and solid Democrats, but I knew what Southern Baptists were like since I had aunts, uncles and cousins who lived in Florida and Georgia and I thought, no way could I vote for someone who held those same kind of beliefs. On the other hand I saw the Ford family as more liberal at the time because of how they presented themselves to the public. The Ford kids were kind of cool and they loved downhill skiing which was a huge passion, still is, for me during those years. I didn’t agree with Ford’s pardoning of Nixon, but I felt that he essentially seemed to be a decent person who was doing a fair job of running the country. I was not politically astute and based my vote on a known quantity that I felt was less of a threat to the separation of church and state than the unknown person of Jimmy Carter who wore his religion on his sleeve. Of course I knew I was entirely wrong about my assumptions about Carter shortly after he became President and felt a kind of remorse about that vote for a very long time. I’d like to point out that Ford was the only Republican I’ve ever voted for in my long history of voting and that I wholeheartedly voted for Carter in 1980 and have voted 100% Democratic in every local, state and federal election since then.