As my generation is entering their first voting election, it is amazing to see so many people getting involved and learning about different candidates in order to best decide who will run our country the best. However, one alarming trend is the amount of people who say, "Oh my vote doesn't matter, I just won't vote."

This could not be more wrong.

Surprisingly enough, a majority of voters over the age of 65 turn up to vote, and therefore hold the majority of the population voting. On the other hand, very small percentages of people ages 18-24 have been voting recently. This information is enough to convince anyone that they should vote, unless they want white people over the age of 65 to be handpicking our next president (yikes).

Personally, I am under the impression that this idea that millennial votes "won't change anything" stems from the older voters intending on suppressing the younger vote. Typically, younger voters are more progressive or lean more towards progressive ideas than the older voters who reliably vote in elections. Once again, this is systematically suppressing the vote of the younger generation.

So, what's the first step to ensuring that our generation votes? Push voter registration in many areas, whether it's schools, public offices or online. It has been shown that simply increasing the amount of young adults registered to vote also increases the amount of young people who actually go and vote. Another major issue is that young people in our country are actually taught surprisingly little about how voting works, the steps to voting and why they need to vote. Never in high school did anyone explain to me how to sign up to vote, how/where to vote or anything else of the kind. This is an issue, and more young adults and young Americans in general should be educated on the basic foundations of our election processes.

So, if you want to be extremely literal, one single vote does not matter greatly among the millions of votes cast for each presidential election. But, when an entire group of voters thinks their single votes do not matter, it all starts to add up and suddenly the opinions and ideas of an entire portion of the population is not represented in politics.

So, if you've ever said to yourself, "Maybe I just won't vote. It doesn't matter," I hope this has compelled you to consider the reasons why you may think this way and to think about why it, in fact, does matter. Please get out there and register to vote!