As most of us have heard by now, the Democratic National Convention has experienced a hack of their email server which has led to public knowledge of the emails exchanged between "neutral" convention members. With the chaos that surrounded the Republican National Convention last week, the DNC was confident that they would have a positive, powerful impact on all viewers, Republican and Democrat. Yet, that went away quickly. So what exactly happened and what do we, as voters, do next?
What happened:
Wikileaks published almost 20,000 emails that show seven DNC staffers discussing anything from how to respond to press questions to attempting to use Bernie Sanders' faith to make him appear weak to the south. This emails are dated from January 2015 to May 2016, showing that the DNC staffers had been trying to undermine Sanders from day one. The emails show favoritism to Hillary Clinton to ensure that she got the nomination. These emails give credibility to Sanders' claim that the system is against him. From the beginning of his campaign, Sanders appealed to the under 30 vote that includes a vocal college aged generation that is drowning in college debt and attempting to break into an aging, yet not retiring, job force. These are the same voters who feel that they have trouble getting their voices heard because the system is against them. And now, these voters and their candidate, have proof that the system was indeed against them and their voices. While Republican nominee Donald Trump may also claim that his party is against him, here he is as their candidate. On the other hand, Sanders won the popular vote in multiple state primaries, yet Hillary was awarded a much higher percentage of the delegates. Add the emails to this illogical delegate distribution, the system really is against Bernie Sanders.
What do we do now:
Now that we have all of this information, what do we do with it? Unfortunately, there's not much we can do besides vote. Yet, it doesn't seem likely that Bernie Sanders will be on the ballot. Do you write him in? Do you vote for Hillary? Do you vote for Trump? A recent poll said that 90% of Bernie supporters would vote for Hillary. But that was taken before the email leak. Regardless of what happens, we all need to vote. The Democratic Party is hoping that the under 30 vote either concedes to Hillary or just doesn't vote. Clearly the system wasn't ready for the under 30 generations to get involved and have their voices heard. The Republican Party is hoping that you look at this situation and read the emails and decide that you may hate Trump but at least he won fairly. The choice is ours.
While the choice is indeed ours, we need to take advantage of it. Not voting just means that your voice isn't being heard. While we, as voters, may feel that our vote doesn't really matter and it's just one vote, there are thousands of people who all say the same thing and don't vote. After this scandal and the turmoil that has surrounded this election, I can guarantee that the votes will be counted and then recounted this November.
