Each day this week, WFAE has been meeting with voters around Charlotte to get a sense of what really matters to them in this election. Many of the voter's we've heard from so far haven't fallen squarely in the liberal or conservative camp, but express beliefs somewhere in between.
Today, we visit Hornet's Nest Park just off Beatties Ford Rd in north Charlotte. Beneath a canopy of pine trees, a mother and her son are walking slowly, picking things off the ground, and stashing them in a paper grocery bag. Are they picking dandelions? Cleaning up litter?
Neither. "We came to pick some pine cones," says Abby, 28. She's done it every year with her son, Skyler, who's three. They later use them to create Christmas ornaments.
Abby, who declined to give her last name, is a Ukrainian immigrant who's lived in Charlotte for about eight years. Before that, she lived in Atlanta.
"I love it here," she says,"I've lived here more than Atlanta, so this kind of like home for me."
And it's about to be her official, legal home because she passed her citizenship test on September 15, about a month ago. Now she's waiting on the final paperwork to arrive in the mail. If she gets everything in on time, she says she wants to vote in the election.
But as we find out in this interview, she's unsure who to vote for.