Expectations for my first election:
-I would love the candidate I was voting for.
-I would be excited to vote.
-I would respect and admire all the candidates.
-I would think it is important to vote.
What I realized during the process of my first election:
-You’re not going to love everything about the candidate running for president.
-Voting is very exciting but it won’t be the most exciting thing about becoming an adult.
-You’re not always going to agree with everyone, and that is okay.
-People who you fear can be extremely powerful.
-It is important to vote!!!!
Everything looks different through the eyes of a young person, and that is coming from a young person herself. The older you get, the more you learn about the world and voting is no exception to the rules. Growing up makes you realize that people are not always nice and you’re not always going to love them, even if they are running for president.
The biggest thing I’ve taken away from the process of voting in my first election is the fact that politicians are still in fact people, and people aren't always what you except them to be.
I am 18 years old and I can only remember one president clearly, Barack Obama. I remember being 10 years old and hearing all the buzz about the first African American man ever being nominated for President. I remember kids in my class wearing Barack Obama T-shirts and everyone seemed so excited and sure. They knew he was a good guy. All of this made me so excited to vote; it was so important and I felt important just talking about it. I sat down in class next to my classmates and teachers while they buzzed about history being made and I thought about how many years it would be until I could vote and how many more elections it would be until I could do it. I was thrilled when I realized there would be an election as soon as I turned 18.
Now the time is finally here and I’m not even confident about who I am voting for. This is an election again where history is being made, everything I could have hoped for at 10 years old and I’m not as excited as I should be. I started off thrilled to vote. In September of 2015, when I was still 17, a senator from Vermont came to speak in the town that neighbored mine. I didn’t know much about who was running at the time but I know that if I was going to be an informed voter, I needed to hear both sides' points of view. That is when, like many of the other teenagers my age, I fell in love with Bernie Sanders.
Bernie Sanders speech, Manassas, Virginia, September 14th, 2015
I agreed with his plan to take down the 1% all the way to his views on immigration. It was like like I found my perfect presidential match. I felt the excitement I expected to feel my first time voting. The button I received at his speech I wore almost every day of my senior year, people began to know me by it, and ask me questions about Bernie. I was so excited. But then came May of 2016 and that is when I began to realize that Bernie most likely was not going to get the Democratic nomination, and someone else would.
It always seemed like I should support Hillary Clinton; I’m all about female power and women getting ahead in the world. But something about her felt off, and many of the other people my age realized that too. It wasn’t just the fact that she lied about her emails, which is one reason Republicans are quick to point out why she's not right for president, but it was the fact that she just wasn’t approachable. I related more to a 74 year old white man than to a women. So I was stuck. I always assumed that I would love whoever I was voting for. It’s not that I don’t like her (I agree with almost everything she stands for); it's that I just don’t love her. It’s hard to realize that what you were looking forward to as a child is nothing like you thought it would be.
That brings me to the man running against her for president. While I was falling in love with Bernie Sanders, I was also learning to hate the future Republican nominee, Donald Trump. He is the absolute worst person I could imagine running for president and he’s doing well. As a child, I never expected to fear a Republican in office; I knew it may be a long four years and involve lots of disagreements but I would never feel scared for my safety. With Donald Trump, I honestly fear for my life. He says whatever he wants without thinking about anyone else and radiates hate. He thinks more about himself than the people he is supposed to be representing and I knew we could never have a man like him run our country.
So sadly when it came down to the two nominees, I knew I would side with the person I liked vs. the person I hated (which is pretty obvious). Some of the people my age and even older have decided to simply not vote in order to avoid voting for anyone they're not sure about. That is the absolute worst possible solution to this problem. We have to vote, especially as young people. We are the next generation and whatever decisions are made now are going to affect us a lot more than our parents and grandparents, so we can't leave all the decisions up to them. It’s obvious that this election is going to be big so even if you’re not sure about the candidates like I am, you still need to vote. The only thing that has lived up to the expectations from when I was young is the knowledge of how important it is to vote. So this coming November, I hope you know what to do, even if neither of the candidates live up to your own expectations.
