First-time voter, Harry Osayimwen, moved to Georgia from his native Nigeria in September 2011 to be reunited with his then 16-year-old son and, as Harry says, “to be the dad my son wanted me to be.”
An engineer by trade, Harry has been working as an office administrator in Norcross where he commutes from Stone Mountain. After seven years of residency in Georgia, Harry followed in the footsteps of his son in April 2018 when he took the oath of U.S. citizenship and registered to vote, an experience Harry describes as “very joyful.”
When asked what prompted Harry to vote in this year’s election and why voting is an important exercise in citizenship, Harry says, “When you do not vote, the system does not work. Voting is an action. If we are supposed to have people who represent us in this system then we must act.”
Harry was registered to vote through the coalition work of the ProGeorgia New Americans Workgroup comprised of the League of Women Voters, Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, GALEO, New American Pathways, and the Georgia Muslim Voter Project.