A man drove more than 1,200 miles from Los Angeles to a county in Texas to cast his ballot on Election Day. Jeff Wilson didn’t receive his mail-in ballot, so, on Sunday, he decided to get in his car and head to his home state.
After a conversation with a friend on Thursday, Wilson was determined to vote Tuesday in Kendall County, Texas — about 50 miles north of San Antonio.
Wilson, who works in L.A., told CBS News that it took about 24 hours to get back home in Texas, sleeping for a “couple hours” in his car in the desert. He initially booked a flight to El Paso, but chose to drive after he saw the city was battling a surge in coronavirus cases.
“It was definitely worth the drive,” he said, adding he was compelled to because of “gravity of this election.”
Hours after casting his vote at Boerne City Hall, Wilson told CBS News that he felt “gratefulness that we have the right to do this.”
“We as Americans, as Texans, get to call this aspect of the shots,” he said.
Before his trip, he told CBS Los Angeles that there are few excuses to not come out on November 3.
“If I’m gonna drive 1,217 miles and sleep in my car for a few hours, I think there aren’t a whole lot of excuses to drive three or four minutes to the polling station and maybe wait a while,” he told the station.
In Texas, voters can apply to receive a vote-by-mail ballot if they are out of the county on Election Day and during early voting.