Madison Kimrey is quite comfortable talking about early preregistration for teen voters, demanding a
meeting with the North Carolina governor and speaking to Al Sharpton on MSNBC.
She’s 12.
The tween, who lives in Burlington, N.C., calls herself an activist, suffragette and feminist. Her main
cause is working to restore voter pre-registration for 16 and 17-year-olds in her home state, then
making a case for it at the national level.
"It’s going to happen eventually, if I’m 60 before it happens," Madison said in a phone
interview from North Carolina earlier this week. "Honestly, I just want to get early
pre-registration back in my state. But my big goal is to get a federal law passed."
Madison is a speaker for Bowling Green State University’s "Girl Culture" celebration during
March, which is Women’s History Month. She will present "Only Six Years until I’m an Adult: My Life
as a Pre-Teen Activist" at 7 p.m. March 24 in Room 206 at the Bowen-Thompson Student Union.
There are several other "Girl Culture" programs planned at BGSU this month (for more
information, see Friday’s Sentinel-Tribune). They are designed to explore the meaning of girlhood and
the experiences of contemporary girls in the U.S.
Madison was visiting a friend in Florida when she got fired up over an issue and decided to attend a
rally.
"I went to a protest down in Florida, at a children’s museum, to protest. They were discriminating
against a same-sex couple. They weren’t going to let them renew their membership and said they weren’t a
real family."
When she got home, Madison said she started paying closer attention to politics and issues in North
Carolina. In August, Gov. Pat McCrory signed new voter legislation that eliminated the early
preregistration for 16 and 17-year-olds.
A speech she did on a "Moral Monday" meeting in North Carolina in October, protesting the new
rules, has received almost 900,000 hits on YouTube. This fall, Madison founded NC Youth Rock, which has
872 "likes" on Facebook.
"A 16-year-old doesn’t need to vote. They (should be able to) preregister so they can walk into the
booth and vote," she said. "It’s actually been proven the teenagers that preregister to vote
show up over the ones who didn’t."
She addresses all kinds of topics on her blog, "Functional Human Being," including last week’s
veto by the Arizona governor of a bill that would have allowed businesses to refuse service to gays.
Madison, who is an only child to parents Doug and Mary, said she’s fairly comfortable in front of the
camera and the podium. Homeschooled, she does a lot of community theater, most recently "Les
Miserables," and used to dance competitively.
"The only thing that I had to work on, as far as my speeches go, is not talking 20 miles a
minute."
Besides YouTube videos, Madison is also on social media, including Facebook and Twitter, and dozens of
stories pop up for her under an Internet search. With that, come the comments, which can be sweet or
vicious.
She’s also been called a liberal prop by McCrory, and given cake by one of his staffers while protesting
outside the governor’s home. (She wasn’t amused.)
Madison said she’s learned to roll with the vitriol and the perception that she’s a little girl trying to
participate in adult conversations.
"I laugh more at the people on the hate comments. Some of them are so hilarious. … It really
doesn’t affect me. I have to learn to laugh at it and ignore it," she said. "It’s just the
Internet. That’s how it works."
Online:
http://functionalhumanbeing.blogspot.com/