Hey everybody. Welcome to Retell Seller, an ephemera podcast where I uncover forgotten stories and the ephemera people leave behind. I’m Angie a reseller of 10 years, and I’ll share one of those snippets with you. Let’s see what today’s find has to say.
Every once in a while I come across a piece of writing that feels like it could have been written yesterday even though it’s nearly a century old. I have a newspaper clipping of a letter to the editor. The paper is unknown, but the comment is out of Decatur, Illinois, published January 6th, 1930.
It’s titled “Discourage the Voter”. The writer doesn’t give their name, but what they say might sound familiar, maybe even uncomfortably so.
I was interested in your article of Sunday issue of The Review regarding the indifference of the citizens neglecting to vote.
In my humble opinion it is caused by the caliber of some of the aspirants for office and the disregards after the election of the rights and desires of the people, especially the politician who promises everything and accomplishes nothing.
The candidate who promises to appoint you or your friend to a position with a lie on his lips, the one who is ever ready to plan and scheme with a few others to rob the citizen voter of his or her rights of franchise and thus discourage the legal and respected voter from going to the polls.
They also become disgusted with the crooked office holder who will betray the confidence of the citizens at large to serve his own selfish ends. The man who tells the workers that he will look after and fight for their interests and then deliberately votes the other way.
The office holder, who insists that we must have lower taxes but when it comes to the time to cast his vote, he is either absent or he has a lapse of memory and votes the opposite persuaded owing to a party lash.
Above all, let us purify the ballot and restore the confidence of the people. The remedy in my humble opinion is for each voter to vote as a non-partisan in all local and county matters, and regardless of his party affiliation, and to select men and women who have and are proven true, honest, and trustworthy and they the people will be pleased to vote at all elections. And above all the legal voters should go to the polls and vote, but before doing so, they should scan the list of candidates very carefully as to their character, ability, and standing within the community.
Now this was torn at the very bottom and I added the words within the community. Since it does appear this is how it ended. And you can find a link to the image of the clipping in the show notes and see if you agree.
This was written almost a hundred years ago, but it reads like something that could appear in an opinion column today, no? It’s not a complaint about one political side or the other. It’s frustration with the system itself and maybe even with human nature. Promises made and forgotten. Confidence lost and replaced with indifference.
The writer’s solution wasn’t radical. It was a call for decency to clean up the ballot, restore confidence, and vote for character over party.
We could debate whether that’s realistic, but the fact that this was published January 6th, 1930 a day, we now know in 2026 as “insert your own thoughts and beliefs here”, nearly 100 years later has to mean something, no? But what stands out most is how steady these concerns have remained. How little has changed about the tension between trust and disillusionment, hope and fatigue, participation and apathy, and I can relate to that tension. I think most of us could. That uneasy place between caring deeply and feeling powerless, but I also recognize we’re all different. What feels right or meaningful for one is not the same for everyone else.
We don’t all process disappointment or hope in the same way, and the truth is most things, including the outcomes we care most about are mostly out of our control. Maybe what matters is simply being honest about where we stand and why, without assuming one path works for everyone.
So here’s what I keep wondering. If the system has never worked perfectly and probably never will. What truly needs to happen? Can it even be guaranteed? Can the promise be kept and would it actually work?
Thank you for joining me as I shared a snippet of the past, I’d love to know if it connected with you in some way. Did it spark a memory or make you see something differently? If so, consider sharing it. Be sure to check out the show notes for additional info, links and ways to connect. It’s not nostalgia, it’s human.
Until next time, may you find something worth holding onto.
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