Throughout history, people have fought tremendously hard for everyone to gain the right to vote. Voting is a right that all citizens have and is critical so that we all have our voices heard and are represented in the choosing of exactly who is making the decisions and policies that greatly impact the way we live.

Voting to choose who forms our policies which determine the way we live is the first important step in becoming involved in shaping the policies that guide our lives, such as policies on healthcare, education, and foreign policy. If you choose not to vote, you don't really have a right to complain if the person you did not want gets elected and comes into office. Voting allows us some control in deciding the policies that shape our lives. Some people who choose not to vote, and claim it is because their vote does not matter in the end, since there are so many people voting. This is inaccurate because every vote counts. There are billions of people in the United States alone.

If a lot of people have the mindset that their vote does not count, then that large amount of people will not have representation in the decision making of policies. This is similar to the bystander effect. In the bystander effect, when there is a situation going on where someone is in need of help, the majority of people will not take any action to help the individual, because they think that someone else will take care of it. Meanwhile, the individual is not being helped, and it might become too late.

Voicing your opinions on social media about issues creates awareness of the issues going on, but it will not result in any impactful change in policy. In order to achieve the change, it is essential that we vote on what we think is best for ourselves and society as a whole. There have been an excessively high amount of school shootings in which hundreds of innocent lives have been taken away because of a lack of a policy change. Every time that a school shooting occurs, people post on social media that their thoughts and prayers are with the families of the lives lost, this creates awareness of the situation, however showing empathy is not nearly enough to prevent this tragedy from repeating itself. What we need is work towards policy change, and the least we can do to work towards this is to vote.