From seeing all the excitement and commotion in the media about the upcoming 58th quadrennial U.S presidential elections this November, I began to wonder why such excitement and commotion doesn’t take place for Congress elections -- and so I decided to write about why it is important to vote for congressmen.
First off, I would like to give an overview about the roles of Congress and what it consists of.
As you probably know, there are three branches that form the U.S federal government: the Executive branch, the Judicial branch, and the Legislative branch-- also known as Congress. Congress is made up of two branches: the Senate, and the House of Representatives. There are a total of 100 senators in the Senate (two for each state), where each senator has a term of six years. On the other hand, there are 435 members that make up the House of Representatives, where each state has a certain number of representatives depending on the size of its population. In addition, each representative has a term of two years. Together, the main role of Congress is to make laws. However, there are other roles that Congress also has and thus is why it is important to vote for your state senators and representatives, just as much as is it to vote for the U.S president. Other roles of Congress include: declaring war, impeaching and trying public and federal officers if accused of a crime, approving or denying presidential appointments--as well as treaties, and the power to coin money, collect taxes from the public and decide how to spend it for the national government. With this said, I would like to share a video that was recommended I use for this article that shows the difference between our taxes and French taxes.
In conclusion, I implore you to do some research on who your state senators and representatives are so you can vote this upcoming November 8th for the candidates who you know will make the best decisions. Furthermore, I would like to end with informing you (or reminding you) that the Legislative Branch is the only branch that is directly elected by the people and therefore, it is “We the People” who choose, so please choose to vote. Every vote counts.
