Nov. 4 is fast approaching, and the hype surrounding the presidential election is beyond the point of saturation. Constant ads attacking the competence and legitimacy of both candidates, news clips and viral videos featuring botched interviews and beauty pageants, and talking heads spewing divisive commentary are only a fraction of the information whirlwind constantly buffeting the people who hold the keys to our nation’s future.
Amid this maelstrom of television commercials, news coverage and incessant backyard bickering, Americans are charged with a responsibility of great importance. This responsibility is a choice, and one that goes beyond the support for one candidate or the other. Whether to stay home or enter a booth and cast a ballot is an easy choice, but many Americans seem to blow it.
There is no shortage of people hammering away on the importance of voting. On our own campus, volunteers have been pushing registration on students for several weeks now. There are Rock the Vote posters plastered across the halls. Recently, a heavily promoted forum encouraging students to participate in the election took place, featuring a cast member from MTV’s The Real World.
And practically no one attended. This begs the question: Do you, as students, not care who becomes the next president of the United States? Are you actually considering not voting come Election Day?
The right to vote is the simplest yet most powerful right you have as a U.S. citizen. Beyond the right to free speech, assembly, or religion, the right to vote has the most direct impact on how you live your life.
We always complain in this country that we deserve better politicians who care more about the people they represent. What this country really deserves are better citizens, who care enough about it to take a small portion of their time every four years to show their support. The politicians will never change if the people don’t, and voting is the ultimate act of involvement in how the country is governed.
If you don’t plan on voting, you have to ask yourself what is stopping you. You wouldn’t let a politician physically reach into your wallet and take your money. I’m sure you would have something to say if a politician came to your workplace and fired you on the spot. So why would you let someone in Washington, D.C., who has never met you before, do the same things? If you could stop choices that affect your life from being made for you, why wouldn’t you?
One of the most common excuses for not voting is the tired “My vote doesn’t matter.” That, however, could not be any less true. No one soldier believes he can win a war by himself, but that doesn’t stop him from taking up arms to fight for a cause he believes in. Many soldiers standing together constitute an army, capable of effecting great change. You, by yourself, cannot win an election, but that shouldn’t stop you from being a part of a greater whole, one that can bring about greater change than even the mightiest army.
Another reason people don’t vote is that they don’t care for either the Democratic or Republican nominee. If that’s the case, there are several independent candidates that would eagerly accept your vote. Never let anyone tell you a vote for an independent is a “wasted vote.” That very term spits in the face of the principles that our country, a representative democracy, was founded on.
To say that people have wasted their votes is to tell them that they have wasted their voices as citizens, and it negates the value of their ideas and opinions.
Abraham Lincoln, in his Gettyburg Address, reminded us that ours is a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Consider this when you feel you have no say in how the nation is run. Remember that your vote is a powerful tool that is sharper than any blade, louder than any bullhorn, and stronger than any metal. Put this tool to use and take the fate of the country into your hands.
