Man drives 1,217 miles from LA to Texas to vote after not receiving mail-in ballot

There are stories coming out of people driving great distances to make their voice heard in the 2020 presidential election. A man drove more than 1,200 miles to cast his vote on Election Day after he didn't receive his mail-in ballot. Jeff Wilson, who works in Los Angeles, made the 19-hour drive to his native home of Texas so that he could vote because of the "gravity of this election."

Wilson drove from California to Kendall County, Texas, which is about 50 miles north of San Antonio. He departed on Sunday afternoon to make sure he would be there on Election Day. Wilson cast his vote at Boerne City Hall on Tuesday, saying that he felt "gratefulness that we have the right to do this."

"It was definitely worth the drive," Wilson told KCAL-TV. "We as Americans, as Texans, get to call this aspect of the shots."

Wilson noted that if he can drive across several states to vote, then people have no excuse not to go to their local polling station to vote even if there is a long wait.

"If I'm gonna drive 1,217 miles and sleep in my car for a few hours, I think there aren't a whole lot of excuses to drive three or four minutes to the polling station and maybe wait a while," Wilson said.

Wilson claimed that it took about 24 hours to get back home in Texas. He said that he slept in his car in the desert for a "couple hours." Wilson said that he originally booked a flight from L.A. to El Paso, but decided to drive after he saw that the Texas city was experiencing a surge of COVID-19 cases.

Another very dedicated voter literally went to great lengths to cast his vote. A man drove from Boston, Massachusetts, to Savannah, Georgia, to cast his vote.

Joe LaMuraglia said he spent over 30 hours in his car so that he could vote after his absentee ballot didn't arrive in the mail.

"They looked it up, they were able to track it, and they had the street address and they had the zip code right," LaMuraglia told The Boston Globe. "But they had the state wrong — they sent it to Virginia."

Traveling more than 1,000 miles each way, the man occupied the 15-hour drive by listening to music, podcasts, and talking on the phone with friends. On Tuesday morning, LaMuraglia cast his vote in Savannah, where he is registered to vote and owns a home.

"That was a lot of freakin' effort, but I could not sit this one out," he said of the 2020 presidential election. "It was just too damn important."

"I look at voting as an obligation," LaMuraglia declared. "It's my job as a citizen."

Last week, two college students drove from Washington, D.C., to Texas after they never received their mail-in ballots that they previously requested.

Meredith Reilly and her friend Zachary Houdek drove nearly 1,400 miles, from D.C. to Fort Worth, Texas, to cast their votes. They only made one stop in Tennessee to get a few hours of sleep at a motel.

"About a month or so ago, I hadn't heard anything back, so I checked the website and my request hadn't been processed," Reilly told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "My name wasn't in the system. Nothing."

"Neither of us were planning on coming home to Texas for Thanksgiving. We were going to stay in the Northeast," Reilly said. "We just had to make sure our votes counted for the presidential election, as well as down ballot."