I’m not voting for a president this year. You can say whatever you want about how I’m not doing my political duty as a citizen by not voting, or if I don’t vote I can’t complain about politics. I whole heartedly disagree.

I follow politics, know what’s going on, and I am going to vote on other things like local millage’s and other local elections, but I’m staying as far away from this current presidential election as I possibly can.

In this election, I feel like I’m settling for all of the candidates in the current election. And I shouldn’t have to settle for any of the candidates. There’s something about every candidate that I don’t like, and it’s big enough for me to not want to vote for them.

You shouldn’t have to settle for a presidential candidate. A presidential candidate should speak to you, and in a way speak for you. And I don’t feel that any of the current candidates speak for me. I personally feel like they are all the best of a situation.

Let me makes something clear too, I don’t want to try and belittle anyone else’s candidate of choice. If you like Donald Trump and think that he speaks for you, vote for Trump. Same for supporters of Bernie Sanders. But I don’t have that feeling towards any candidate, so I’m not going to settle for someone that I think is the best.

I’ve been told my whole life that if you don’t vote in the election, you’re not doing you duty as a citizen. And I kinda believed that, even if my one vote may not actually mean that much in the grand scheme of things, it still means something. It still gets counted. But now I think that if you choose not to vote on something for a good reason, that is not shirking your job. Now if someone doesn’t go vote because they want to keep watching Netflix, that’s a different issue.

So I’m going to vote in the fall, maybe by absentee, it depends on how my class schedule works out, but if the current crop of candidates is who is running for president in the General Election. I’m not voting for president. I’m not going to support someone who I don’t think speaks for me.

You don’t have to agree with what I’m saying, that’s fine, but I think that there are people out there who agree with me. They don’t feel that there is a candidate that represents their opinions and thoughts, and they feel lost in this election feel like they’re settling. I just want all those people to know that it’s okay to not check off a box for President in the fall.

But that doesn’t mean you can check out on politics in general. There are probably things going on in you hometown, or wherever you’re registered to vote that you want to have a say in. Things like whether or not your city is going to create a tax to pay to repave all of the roads, or a tech bond for your old high school matter too. And in some cases they might affect your every day life more so than who is president.

So it’s okay not to vote if you don’t have a candidate that you love, and I hope that people don’t just settle for a candidate. But most importantly, vote how you feel you should vote. Don’t let people peer pressure you in this, and don’t be afraid to tell people “I don’t want to talk about it” if they ask you who you voted for.