I'm lucky to grow up in a family that still votes. Seeing my parents vote gave me a very closed sliver of insight on what the election process looked like. Now that I'm over 18, I find myself registering official documents that most 18-year-olds do, like voting... right?
Well, not really. To put it briefly, people 18-29 are the least likely to vote. In fact, from previous records, we have voted the least in the elections. That means a whole section of representation for the needs and endeavors we hope have been expunged from the national record. We are unacknowledged to a large extent because we refuse to put ourselves out there.
Because of this, don't you think it's hypocritical to say that the country is turning towards foul ideas when we ourselves never did anything to create change? I'm not saying everyone is mandated to go into the streets and start rioting for the things they want, but I am saying that the simplest and often times most recognized way to make change is by crossing off a few checkboxes from a ballot — voting.
A lot of people have told me that they believe voting to be useless because at the end of the day, their voices don't matter. I don't know how much more I can emphasize the toxicity of this mindset. Believing that you don't have a voice plays a major role in extinguishing your voice.
Maybe our voice is diminished in large numbers, like in the general elections. I have two arguments for this.
One, it's not just about your voice, it's about the thousands of other 18-year-olds who also think their voices don't matter. When it comes to wide-scale events like this, when you take out this many peoples' voices, you don't hear any sound from us at all. We can definitely go about angrily messaging each other on Messenger about how the elections didn't turn out in our favor, but those voices won't be acknowledged by the government. We need to take steps in putting our voices out there through tangible means.
Two, voting isn't just about the general election. It's so much more than that. There are smaller-scale elections for governors and senators where the voting population sample is a lot smaller. In those cases, it can be one or two votes that can drastically change the outcomes.
The important thing to take away in all this is that we shouldn't be hasty in determining what change will happen from one vote. It doesn't work like that; nothing big or momentous works like that. Instead, if you look at the change of mindset over time, not only do you see a shift of power and morals in our country, but you also see a major change in our very social fabric — the way we think, the way we educate our kids, the content that pervades into social media. All of these things can happen because someone in a position of power fought for these changes — and our moral obligation is to pick someone that we trust to support the morals we stand for.
I may not know you but I will earnestly ask you to vote.
