Don't get me wrong; I love Bernie Sanders and I always will. But as much as it hurts me, I won't be voting for him today. This election has been dramatic and intense, resulting in the two major parties nominating the least-liked candidates in more than 30 years. This year the American public, myself included, has watched and worried constantly over the potential outcome of this election. Whether you started out a Bernie, Hillary, Trump, or Rubio supporter, or if you always disliked them all, one thing is certain now: a lot is on the line this Election Day.

The elected candidate will replace Obama in the White House and that is a frightening thought for many. Personally, my vote will go to the candidate that my values most align with, but my decision will also factor in who I believe has a true shot of winning and going on to do a good job.

With such a polarized election, the choice has come down to who I can have in office and feel safe having as a leader. Trump has reinvigorated a prominence of racism, xenophobia, islamophobia, and homophobia. He has said hateful and derogatory things about women, disabled people, and veterans, and he has denied facts to paint himself in a better light time and time again. Hillary has made it apparent that she intends to spread love and not hate. As one of her famous slogans says, "Love trumps hate." Electing Trump would signify that America has normalized hate and made it okay to be hateful. I am not claiming that Hillary is perfect; no candidate is. But I am truly afraid of a Trump win, even with our system of checks and balances.

Hillary has lately been criticized greatly for her email "scandal". In my opinion, however, it was a complete and honest mistake of an action that wasn't fully thought through. FBI Director James Comey wrote this week, "Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July". Let's look at the facts, of those 30,000 emails:

1. 110 emails contained classified information

2. 8 of these she should have known had information that was "top secret"

3. 36 of them had "secret" information

4. 8 had information that she should have known was "confidential"

The American government has enough checks and balances in place and enough scrutiny that would be turned toward Hillary to make me confident that this kind of accident wouldn't happen again. It has even been proven that Donald Trump has a 76% mostly false or false rating on his public statements.

Bernie Sanders himself has denounced voting for a third party candidate or choosing to write in his name, saying:

"I ran as a third-party candidate. I'm the longest-serving independent in the history of the United States Congress. I know more about third-party politics than anyone else in the Congress, okay? And if people want to run as third-party candidates, God bless them! Run for Congress. Run for governor. Run for state legislature. When we're talking about The President of the United States, in my own personal view, this is not the time for a protest vote. This is time to elect Hillary Clinton and then work after the election to mobilize millions of people to make sure she can be the most progressive president she can be."

I don't know about you, but I think George Washington was right when he warned against a polarized two-party system.