This woman flew 2,597 miles across the country just so she could vote

When it dawned on Arohi Sharma that she wouldn’t be able to cast her vote in the 2016 presidential election, she was devastated.

Sharma, a second-year graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School, had mailed her vote-by-mail application to the Los Angeles County registrar’s office Oct. 24, but because it was lost in the mail or not recorded, she was told she wouldn’t be able to request an absentee ballot in time to vote.

For Sharma, 26, a native Californian, participating in this election was more than a civic duty. It was writing history. She had only one option left: fly from Cambridge, Mass., back to Los Angeles so that she could cast her ballot during early voting.

So that’s what she did. On Saturday, Sharma boarded her 7:30 a.m. flight and landed in Los Angeles more than 5 hours later.

Sharma is a political enthusiast and understands the voting system well, but like many university students and other Americans who request absentee ballots, she was caught in a bureaucratic and logistical process many describe as unduly cumbersome.

She said she spent two hours on the phone with various registrar offices and voter assistance hotlines to no avail. She couldn’t request an absentee ballot from the Los Angeles County registrar’s office because the deadline was Nov. 1, and she couldn’t vote provisionally in Massachusetts because she’d missed the deadline to register there.

“It brings up bigger issues about why it would take any system longer than five or six days to pass a ballot,” she said.

After Sharma began discussing her absentee ballot ordeal with her classmates, she realized she wasn’t the only one experiencing problems. “I started to hear all these crazy stories about how my classmates weren’t able to cast absentee ballots,” she said. “I realized I shouldn’t be blaming myself for not calling a day earlier.”

Sasha Belenky, one of Sharma’s classmates, experienced similar anxiety over voting by absentee ballot for her home state in Kentucky. Belenky, 28, said she was uncertain of the timeline and not clear how long any of the steps would take. She said she filled out a request for an absentee ballot in early October and that it wasn’t until Friday that she got her absentee ballot.

“I filled it out and ran over to UPS before it closed,” Belenky said.

Sharma’s parents spoke with her on the phone the night she learned she would not be able to vote. “I was crying and they calmed me down,” Sharma said. “They knew how important it was for me to vote in this election.”

That’s when her father suggested that she fly home and vote early here.

The $627 plane ticket was an extravagance that not everyone could afford, Sharma acknowledged. “I recognize that I had the privilege to overcome the hurdle, but there are infinitely more who don’t have those kinds of resources,” she said.

“It means that voter education and simplified processes are even more important, so that those who don’t have the money to afford a flight home don’t have to make that decision in the first place.”

For Sharma, a Democrat and staunch Hillary Clinton supporter since 2008, said it didn’t matter to her that California is a solid blue state almost certain to vote overwhelming for Clinton.

“Not every decision needs to be economically rational, and that decision to me didn’t have to be rational,” she said. “Now that I cast my vote for Hillary Clinton, if she gets elected and her policies are implemented, I can hold myself accountable.”

Sharma said she also received about $100 from classmates who donated money to help pay for her flight.

After arriving in Los Angeles on Saturday afternoon, Sharma headed out to her polling station, El Camino College. After waiting 1.5 hours in line, Sharma finally cast her vote.

melissa.etehad@latimes.com

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