I'm finally of voting age and lucky me, the presidential candidates I get to pick between for my first election are bigot Donald Trump and liar Hillary Clinton!
I'm 19 years old, not old enough to legally have a drink but apparently old enough to decide who should run our nation. As a college student, I'm told all the time that it's perfectly acceptable not to have your mind made up. I guess that only applies to choosing a field of study and other major life decisions that aren't voting related because when I tell people I don't want to vote, not only do they become angry, they tell me, like a reflex, that I'm not exercising my right as an American.
I'm not a supporter of Trump or Clinton for numerous reasons that I won't go into detail about here. In this situation, most people suggest something like, "Well, just vote for Hillary if you really don't want Trump to be president." I am not going to vote for one candidate just to have one more vote against the other because frankly, I don't want either of them in The White House and I don't see how compromising my beliefs to pick the "lesser of two evils" solves anything for me. Another thing I am told to do is just vote for my party. Well, I, and a lot of college students, are registered as Independent. And if we choose to vote Third Party for someone like Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, our votes wouldn't even count because those candidates have less than 10 percent of the vote.
Now I know President isn't the box to be marked on Election Day, even though it's arguably the most important. To be honest, I know very little about other national elections because all the media chooses to cover is the presidential campaigns. And let's be honest, unless I'm a college student who's really into politics, I'm only going to know about the the things that have been put in front of me on the internet. As far as local elections, I go to school in a different state than my home state and don't know enough about my new state to make informed decisions.
As far as I'm concerned, not voting is the best decision I can make for myself. And by making an informed decision not to vote, I am still exercising my right as an American.
