Dispatch from Greenwich Time’s Frank MacEachern:
For the first time, Raul Fajardo, 45, voted in a U.S. election Tuesday.
The Guatemala native received his American citizenship two years ago, and the Byram resident was determined to vote.
Holding his two sons Jacob, 5, and Jason, 3, Fajardo was greeted by applause by election officials at New Lebanon School when he told them he was voting for the first time.
“I told my wife that this was one of the first things we were going to do after getting our citizenship, was to vote,” he said.
His wife Sandra was going to join him a little later at the school, as she too was going to cast her first ballot.
Fajardo said he was proud to vote and said it is a much different experience than it is in his native Guatemala.
“It is very bad down there. Here it is much clearer and better,” he said.
At Western Middle School, custodian Jose Ochoa, 56, a Colombia native who moved to the United States three decades ago, shared Fajardo’s delight in a U.S. election. He too said it’s much different in his native Colombia.
“This is amazing,” said Ochoa, a Norwalk native, as he watched voters walk into the school’s gym. “I tell people they don’t know good they have it here. No army, no police, no killing.”