For most of college students, this is our first presidential election we will get a chance to vote, and with the primaries coming up, our votes are very critical. Now more than ever, candidates have to have a strong presence in the media and social media to get votes, and millennials are the most influential generation on social media. Even as uninformed as most of us are, whether it be a general apathy towards politics or that "The Bachelor" conflicts with CNN Nightly News, we are content to stay in our “college bubble” and only step out to make a funny meme about Trump’s hair.
While most people are encouraging young people to get out there and vote as millennials are the least likely generation to make it to the polls (19.9 percent compared to 26.6 percent in previous generations when they were our age), I respectfully disagree.
What? You’re saying I shouldn’t get out there and vote? Well, not exactly.
Way back in 1789, the way elections worked was that white men who owned property voted for electorates, and it was usually these white men who were highly educated in politics. These electorates would be the congressmen and senators, and when they were elected, they would vote for who was in power in the Federal government. This means that even the people who did have the right to vote, which wasn’t many, didn’t even get a direct say in who was president. This was the original Electoral College. I would have no problem going back to this original system of the college; taking away direct election of presidents by the American public.
Most of you probably think me a communist or fascist or unpatriotic or whatever at this point. But hearing conversations of how Trump is hilarious, and how Bernie makes a great meme or Hillary is bossy and annoying as being actual reasons to vote or not vote for these candidates makes me terrified for November 8.
Before you Feel the Bern, vote for the H with the arrow in it or Make American Great Again (again), I challenge you to get to know all your options. The best way to do this is to read each platform, which takes no more than 10 minutes each. However, most of us don’t have an hour to spend reading platforms, which I understand wholeheartedly.
If we don’t have time, the website http://www.isidewith.com/ asks you a bunch of questions pertaining to economics to politics to social issues, and rank each issue with how important you feel it is. After the quiz, it matches you with a percent that you agree with certain candidates. You can look and see on what issues you agree and disagree with for each candidate.
This quiz isn’t radical or life changing. In fact, after you take the quiz chances are you probably support the same candidate that you thought you would. Changing your vote isn’t the point. The point is that you are more educated on the issues and know exactly why you support the candidate you do.
The founding father’s didn’t give people the direct right to vote because they felt the general public was uneducated in politics, and at the time they were right. Today, many of us are just as uneducated, but we have no excuse. We have the world in our hands, literally, so we should use it to exercise our patriotic duty to be educated voters.
