Theoretically speaking, voting in your first election should be an exciting time in your life! You're at the point where you are young enough for your mom to still make your doctor appointments, but you're old enough to help choose the Commander in Chief of our country. It seems that, for this election, more and more people have been asking if they should even make the effort to vote. Both major party candidates are believed by many to be incapable of running a country, and voting for a third-party candidate is almost like not voting at all. In that case, why is it so important to get out there and vote today?

The biggest reason why you should vote in the election is that, as a citizen, it's both your responsibility and your right to cast a vote. All political affiliations aside, the reason we, as Americans, have a democracy, is so that the voices of the people can be heard. Our political system relies on citizen voters, but many voters believe the electoral college misrepresents the popular vote. Statistically speaking, for the 2012 election, more than 241 million people in the United States were eligible to vote, but only 129.1 million people casted ballots. That means that just 53.6% of the eligible voting population bothered to even show up. To risk sounding like your dad, it is, in fact, your civic duty to vote in elections. The reason early Americans fought for the right to vote was to take into consideration the opinions of everyone the election would affect, with the exception of women and minorities. Now, since almost every citizen over the age of 18 is eligible to vote, a greater number of votes are being cast, and each vote is just as valuable.

It's also important to vote because no matter how much you may hate a candidate, someone is still going to end up as president for four years. You may think Hillary Clinton is a liar and Donald Trump is a misogynist, but even if you boycott the election because of this, one of them is going to end up in the White House. I can assure you that staying home on election day and complaining about the candidates is not going to prevent one of them from winning the presidency. After the 2012 election, 30 states petitioned to secede when Obama was reelected. As stated earlier, 111.9 million people didn't vote in this election. That means that roughly 2.3 million people in each state didn't vote. This means that over 67 million people total in the 30 states that petitioned did nothing to prevent Obama's reelection, but were still upset about it. In the same election, Mitt Romney lost by just over 3 million votes, which is roughly 1% of eligible voters. This goes to show that a small portion of people who didn't vote could have made a large impact, and that individual votes do, in fact, matter.

The bottom line here is that voting is very important. No matter how much you hate Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, voting is still worth your time. Despite what many people believe, each vote cast during an election matters. Instead of not voting, you should do your best to get informed about all of the candidates and make an educated choice when you head to the polls.

Happy Voting Day!