“I think the fact that I actually made the contribution and it was like, it was like personal,” she explained. “Because before then I would have to encourage those around me to vote. My vote was represented through my parents, through friends, through family.”
“And now, it’s like I can actually go and I can speak for myself,” she continued. “Which as somebody who — I really like the hands-on process of a lot of things — that was something that was really special for me.”
In a separate interview with CNN, Yolanda shared that her parents, Martin Luther King III and Arndrea Waters King, instilled in her the importance of participating in elections from a young age.
“They would take me to the polls, and so I [would]… see that growing up,” she said. “And then I remember feeling really sad because I realized, ‘Oh, I can’t participate in the voting,’ and so then that would make me really sad, and they’d always give me the ‘I just voted’ sticker. So I’d go around parading around and pretending like I just voted.”
