You Have the Right to Vote – Annette Scott Will Prove It!
Meet Annette Scott, nurse, advocate and the woman helping Lunch Break guests find their voice at the ballot box
For three years, Annette Scott has shown up at Lunch Break not with a stethoscope, but with voter registration forms and a quiet determination to make sure every guest knows their rights.
Annette’s path to Lunch Break runs through decades of demanding healthcare work. A graduate of Monmouth University, where she earned both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Nursing, she spent years as a night shift crisis nurse at University Hospital on the Surgical-Trauma-Intensive Care Unit, as a Trauma Nurse at Monmouth Jail and as a mental health screener and board-certified psychiatric nurse at Monmouth Medical Center. She also helped open the Shoreline Behavioral Health in Toms River (now St. Barnabas Substance Abuse Hospital) in Toms River. A member of the League of Women Voters of Monmouth County, Annette brings the same clear-eyed compassion from her nursing career to the registration table.
One of the biggest misconceptions Annette encounters, particularly among guests who have been involved in the justice system, is the belief that a felony conviction ends their right to vote forever. “They think since they committed a felony they can’t vote. I tell them: not only can you vote, you can work the polls. Annette has registered several guests and staff members as poll workers.
She hears similar misunderstandings from homeless guests. Housing status, she reminds them, has nothing to do with civic rights. “Just because you don’t have a residence doesn’t mean you don’t have rights.” When guests tell Annette their vote won’t make a difference, she doesn’t argue, she teaches. She walks them through the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and points to the reintroduction of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act in 2025, which would require jurisdictions with histories of discrimination to pre-clear changes to voting laws before they take effect. “They say, ‘My vote doesn’t matter.’ And I say, ‘Let me give you some history.'”
A gentleman from North Carolina once approached Annette and politely asked if he could ask her a question. He told her he had served time in NC, and assumed that meant he could never vote again. Annette asked what he was doing now. “My mother needs me,” he said. She told him that it mattered and then told him something else: if he lived in New Jersey for 30 days, he was eligible to register to vote. He could even become a poll worker, with just one day of required training at a location near home. “He thought he could never vote again. And I got to tell him: in New Jersey, you can.”
Important Deadline
October 14 is the last day to register for the November elections
Register online at vote.nj.gov and if you have questions, find someone like Annette at Lunch Break!
