I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but there’s a little over a year until we as citizens vote for the next president of the United States. With that being said, discussion of political issues, candidates, and numerous polls are consuming our news outlets, social media sites, and conversations. It wasn’t until after the recent Democratic and Republican debates, did I realize how uninformed I am, as well as the majority of my Facebook friends are, on some very important political issues.

I’ve had the privilege of voting in one presidential election so far and I’ll be the first to admit that, at the measly age of 20, I didn’t have much of a clue as to what I was doing. I knew who I would vote for, mainly based upon the political party that I affiliated with. But I had no clue where else to go from there. While filling out my ballot, there were several different things to vote on leading up to my choice for a president.

I have no idea what type of levies I helped pass, or strike down. I had no clue as to who half of the people running for local positions were, and I really had no clue on how the whole process actually worked. Embarrassingly enough, if there was an issue that I was uninformed on or which candidate to choose for a position, I either voted by party, or for the candidate who had the cooler name.

That was excruciating to admit. What’s even more terrifying however, is knowing that I can’t be the only citizen in this entire country to vote on important issues based on bogus reasons simply because we just aren’t informed.

I remember walking out of that building, knowing that I should have done some more research on the two presidential candidates before selecting one. Sadly enough, I remember feeling relieved to know that the one I’d selected most likely wouldn’t win, and I wouldn’t have to deal with the shame of being “part of the problem” as a voter who helped put an incompetent president into office. I decided that day to utilize the next four years to develop my own opinion on important issues regarding this country so that by 2016, I would know exactly why I’m voting for a president, aside from their political party, or the attractiveness of their name.

The Importance of Voting:

Ever since I can remember, I’ve been told that voting is not only my right as an American citizen, but that it is my duty. I am a very opinionated millennial who cannot sit still and wait for something to be changed or fixed. My ninth grade English teacher told me that I have a voice and it would be a shame if that voice went unnoticed. I believe the same is true for each and every citizen of this country. It doesn’t matter if you’re 18 or 80, if the government makes a decision that you disagree with, don’t just post about it on Facebook and hashtag #RantOver. Advocate for the cause, get your opinion out there and help make a change.

A decently intelligent man by the name of Albert Einstein once stated “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.” Everyone is so quick to fight for our civil rights as Americans, but how quick are we to look up what homeland security actually is, ensuring that we can have an informed enough opinion of the topic so that we can vote for someone who also shares that opinion. One of our most important civil rights as United States citizens is to vote and to make sure that our voting opinions are informed.

I wanted to gauge just how informed or uninformed our society is when it comes to elections and important political issues. I couldn’t find the type of information that I was looking for, so through www.surveymonkey.com I created a 10 question survey and collected 86 responses from my Facebook friends and family. Some of my findings were shocking and some were not.

Although I could not cross-tabulate my findings, I felt that age was an important factor to gain when conducting my research, just to see the ages of people who were actually interested in taking the survey. My findings are as follows:

I was not shocked that a third of the respondents were also millennials, as most of my Facebook friends fall into that age group. I was however excited to see respondents that were 50 or older taking my survey. It made for some very diverse responses.

There are two questions that I put in the survey to determine the raw and brutally honest opinions of my respondents, as well as to add some shock value to this study. The first question was, “Would you vote for a female candidate?” These were my results.

I also asked respondents “Would you ever vote for a candidate who is not Caucasian?” Below are my results for that particular question.

Lets camp out here for a minute. I was floored to find that 13.95 percent of my respondents would not even consider a female candidate. I was also shocked to find that, although a small percentage, 3.49 percent of my respondents would not consider a candidate who is not Caucasian. I would hope that my friends and family, the people who I’d asked to participate in this survey would put aside their negative views on these two issues if a candidate of one or more of these demographics were to have superior politics, ideas, and stances than say a caucasian male.

When it comes to voting for a president, I think that as a nation, we need to vote on the important things that would make a candidate a better president than the last. We’ve all voted based on shallow reasons, so I asked another question to see the non-issue related voting habits of my respondents.

Although I was glad to see that the majority of my respondents voted based on something political; the political party of a candidate, it’s alarming that still almost 46 percent of my respondents vote based on personality/charisma, race, personal appearance/attractiveness, witty/quick responses, and the current position/occupation of a candidate.

This is why it is important to educate ourselves on important political issues before electing a president. Personality, witty responses, and personal appearance, are all nice attributes for your everyday person. However, these are not the appropriate qualifications that we need to be considering when voting for the next president of the United States.

This country is going down the toilet quickly because we would rather vote for a candidate who “tells it like it is” or “has great hair” than open a computer or a book and educate ourselves on what issues are currently sinking this nation, and how our next president and their stance on those issues can turn this country around.

To prove my point even further, I asked the question “Out of these hot topics, which do you have an informed stance on?” Everybody’s opinion is different, but determine for yourself which of these topics are more crucial for the survival of our nation politically, and which are more social/moral issues and see for yourself which issues that our peers are more informed on.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that more people are informed about healthcare than I’d expected. The rest of the results, however are a tad alarming if you ask me. I’m trying to remain unbiased and not clue you in on my stance for these issues, so I’m just going to leave that there.

In conclusion, if I haven't yet made it evident that you need an informed opinion on the issues and candidates before you vote, here it is: Please for the love of our founding fathers, go educate yourselves on this country's economy, budget, homeland security, etc.! Even if you have to use Wikipedia, it's better than your cousin's Facebook rant that I can only imagine most of our “informed” opinions are coming from. As an opinionated millennial who wants to see some positive change happen for our country, I am absolutely pumped for next November and I hope that you are, too!

If you have any questions about the numbers I came up with for my respondents, or are interested in some of the other questions that were included in the survey, but not this article, I highly encourage you to check my survey out at:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-8GXWWPHY/