Two young Americans describe what voting means to them and their excitement about casting their first ballots. Rebecca Zeifman is a writer with the Bureau of International Information Programs of the U.S. Department of State.

The right to vote is one of the most basic privileges in a democracy. In the United States, any resident who is an American citizen and at least 18 years old is eligible to vote.

For first-time voters, casting that inaugural ballot is a monumental occasion. It is a chance for them to exercise their constitutionally protected right and to participate in political decision making.

Below, two voters — a student who has just come of voting age and a recently naturalized U.S. citizen — reflect on their first time at the polls.

Joanna Fisher is a 20-year-old college student from Charlotte, North Carolina, who spends nine months of the year at college in Waterville, Maine. She voted for the first time in 2005, casting her ballot in the Maine state elections.

For Fisher, there was never a doubt that she would vote at the earliest opportunity. "I always knew I would register to vote as soon as there was an election I was old enough to vote in," Fisher says. "I guess I was raised in a family where you care about politics and you care about what's going on around you."

Even before she was old enough to vote, Fisher participated in the political process. During the 2004 presidential election, she was 17 years old — just one year shy of the legal voting age. In lieu of voting, Fisher worked for U.S. Senate candidate Erskine Bowles, passing out flyers door-to-door in her hometown of Charlotte. She also volunteered at her school, helping her older classmates register. "That was the [election that] was really important to me, and even though I didn't vote in it, I did a lot of work," she says.

When Fisher turned 18, she took it upon herself to register. "My parents didn't even say, 'You have to register to vote,'" she says. "It was just something that made sense to me."

So on November 8, 2005, Joanna registered and cast her first ballot minutes later. "That election was just a Waterville election. It was [for] mayor, city commissioner, and really local things," she explains. "I showed up with a North Carolina driver's license [for identification]. It took three minutes and then I voted."

Since that first election, Fisher has already voted again, this time in the state governor's race in November 2006. Now she is looking forward to the 2008 elections. "I am very excited to vote because it's my first presidential election," she says. "It's four years and it's our national image, both for us and for other countries."

Malavika Jagannathan, 23, felt similar enthusiasm about voting for the first time. As a reporter for the Green Bay Press-Gazette in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Jagannathan was frustrated with covering elections on the job but being unable to participate herself.

Originally from Bangalore, India, Jagannathan moved to the United States with her family in 1995, settling in College Station, Texas. From an early age, her family stressed the importance of political participation. "My mom always said that although our passports were from a different country, you had to be an active participant in any society you are in," Jagannathan says.

Like Fisher, Jagannathan was involved in politics long before she was eligible to vote. In high school she volunteered for the Democratic Party and the Green Party, handing out flyers and organizing voter registration drives at school. "I would set up these little booths, but I couldn't register them [other students] myself because I wasn't registered to vote," she says.

According to Jagannathan, her status as a noncitizen actually inspired her to become more involved in politics. "I knew that I wasn't able to [vote], but I could definitely still contribute in other ways other than voting," she says. "I think that's partially why I was pretty into politics."

On December 14, 2006, Jagannathan became a U.S. citizen. The next day she visited the Green Bay city hall and checked the "Yes" box on the voter registration application that asks, "Are you a citizen of the United States of America?"

Even though it would be almost two months until the next election, Jagannathan was eager to sign up. "I figured I'd been talking about voting for so long, the first thing I should do is register," she says.

Two months later Jagannathan voted in a local primary with a few initiatives on the ballot. "I was very excited. My polling place is a church around the corner from where I live, and it's run by these little old ladies. I told them it was my first time to vote, and they got all excited too," she says.

After covering several elections as a reporter and volunteering for a political party, it was a relief to finally participate as a voter. "I had sort of built it up for a long time, and I think, especially after the November 2006 elections when it was killing me to sit here and cover the elections and not be able to participate, it kind of fulfilled that in a little way," she says.

Even though not all of her favored candidates won that day, Jagannathan made a vow to friends and family that she would try to vote in every subsequent election. "It just felt that I was a part of something," she explains. "And I think not having that for a long time I realized that having it is pretty important."

According to Jagannathan, new citizens may value the right to vote even more than U.S.-born citizens. "I think that when you're just sort of born with these rights you maybe don't think about them as much," she says. "When you have to live without them and then you get them, it becomes a lot more important."