Why this non-voting Latino reporter finally got to the ballot box this year

I used to interview police officers at crime scenes while having warrants out for my arrest.

I used to walk in and out of press conferences at police headquarters — even interviewed the police chief in his office — while having warrants out for my arrest.

I used to write the police blotter, where I listed every arrested person and their alleged crime, while having warrants out for my arrest. Sometimes, I’d type mine out, as I imagined it would appear in the blotter:

ARRESTED

• A 28-year-old man by officers Oct. 29 on warrants charging him with irony.

I was stopped by a deputy in late 2015 for having an expired registration and, on top of that, he saw that I was driving without a license.

The officer told me the solution was simple: show up in court with a new registration and a license and everything would be taken care of. I didn’t. And, after two to three years, those tickets turned into warrants.

I was then a crime reporter with a guilty conscience.

A few weeks ago at work, I had a similar feeling of irony as we pitched stories on voting.

My heart started racing. I was sweaty and my voice was shaky. It was how I imagined I’d feel when an officer finally stopped me on the road, looked up my record and it was time for me to face my demons.

Before a specific story was assigned to me, I had to confess — “I have never voted before.”

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My shame was apparent.

As a non-voter, confessing that I had never participated in an election was like coming out of the closet as a bad American. As a Latino, there was extra guilt.

So, I got to work. That weekend, my friend Alex Garza helped me register to vote. I filled out the form, and she helped me with the stamp and mailing part.

I’ll be honest, even now as an eligible and registered voter, I still felt like my vote didn’t matter. Alex pushed me toward the right direction, but I still lived with family who believed voting was a waste of time. They would get annoyed whenever I brought up the subject.

To shut off the negativity, I went back inside the closet. This time as a registered and interested future voter. During that time, I was looking for someone to relate to and found it in an old friend — my brother Juan Sanchez.

Juan is the kind of big brother who would kick your butt if you made fun of me for having toilet paper stuck on my shoe at school. Which has happened. Only that Juan was the one laughing. And I was the one who wanted to beat him up.

He was the son my parents bragged about. The hard worker who helped out with heavy labor around the house. While I was the one who didn’t like to sweat.

“I’ll wash the truck and cut the grass,” Juan would tell me when our parents would assign us chores. “You can just sit there and keep me company.”

I learned Juan has been voting since he was 18. And as different as we were as kids, we also are voters who care about different issues. He told me he was a first generation voter who was patriotically pushed into participating in democracy.

“Politicians, and people who campaigned for them, would knock on my door and offer to drive me to the ballot box,” he said. “If it wasn’t for them, I don’t think I would have ever voted.”

This year, Juan and I were there to encourage each other. Juan said he probably wouldn’t have voted had I not reached out to him this year. I don’t know if my answer would be the same, but it is a definite fact that he made the experience easier.

I took care of the warrants and never got arrested. But those years of avoiding fixing my legal issues had me living uneasy. I hated living with a big problem that had an easy fix from the start.

I felt the same throughout the past 10 years whenever my friends would bring up why voting was important to them.

Now that I’ve voted, I can say this wholeheartedly: Speak out and encourage each other. This is not the election year for us to wait and see what happens to our country. Go out and vote.

Ismael Pérez is a journalist at the Chicago Sun-Times.