It's election season again, and this year has seen some of the most divisive, almost violent campaigning in American history. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are severely disliked, not only by their respective opposing parties but also by the very people that they expect to vote for them. This election also comes during one of the lowest points in American history for voter turnout, a little more than half of those eligible to vote voted for president in 2012. Because of this, there has been a great effort by both sides to convince people to get out and vote this election season. Facebook, Twitter, and even Pandora have been running ads in an attempt to get the younger generations who are historically less likely to vote to participate in choosing our next president. The ability to participate in our political process is more than just a right, it is our civic duty and one of the many things that make living in America better than living in some other parts of the world. Despite this, I am choosing not to vote for the president in this election. As an International Relations major, and a hopeful future politician, I have a vested interest in the policies of the American government and have been following this election cycle very closely, in the end I couldn't cast my ballot for either of the two front-running candidates and still be able to sleep contently at night. I'm not here to tell you that you shouldn't vote, or who to vote for, just to give you my reasons why I can't bring myself to.

First and foremost, as most of us learn in middle school Social Studies, there is no real reason that the popular vote has an effect on who is elected president. Popular belief tells us the the Electoral College takes the popular vote into consideration when casting their own votes, and therefore whoever gets the most votes in the popular election will be selected by the College. This, for the most part, is how it happens, but there is no federal legislation that requires the College to do this, they can and have voted in direct defiance to the results of the popular election. Presidential candidacy and the election itself have also been affected by American culture, that is we have turned the president from being a civil servant into being a celebrity. Because of this, the campaigns are really more focused on flashy ads and aggressive, hyperbolic rhetoric than on the policies of the candidates. Attack ads prove that the campaign is not about political policy but popular reputation. The two party system that our government has adopted makes it near impossible for a third party candidate to get close to being elected, so a vote for them is more or less the same as not voting.

Donald Trump is easily criticized, both as a presidential candidate and as a human being. The most glaring problem with his bid for president is that the man has had absolutely no experience with politics, national or otherwise, in his entire career. To many Americans who are dissatisfied with the current state of American politics, this comes more as a blessing than as a curse. However, the foremost responsibility of the POTUS is to be an ambassador for the American people.The job requires a certain grace and understanding of the political system, not only of our country but of countries around the world. Trump has not had the experience in the political realm that is required to build this kind of understanding. Donald Trump is, more than anything else, a celebrity. To celebrities like him there is no such thing as bad press, scandals only result in more people saying and recognizing his name. The same is not true of the President. When Trump, as a celebrity, says things that are racist, misogynistic, or otherwise hateful, there is little repercussion because he is no more important than anyone else. When he says those things while holding the office of President, the consequences become much more dire. The prospect of building a wall on our southern border and insulting the people of an entire nation is not so bad when it is said by one man, but when the president builds a wall on the border and insults America's third largest trading partner, that will affect the country in many negative ways. Trump also runs the risk of alienating the people he is supposed to be representing, and his foreign policy of continuous war in the Middle East is more likely to exacerbate the threat of terrorism than solve it, but that can be said of Clinton as well. Aside from his aggressive xenophobia and serial mistreatment of women, however, Trump's policies are nothing new. He calls for a return to Reagan-era unregulated economics in which the rich get richer and it is expected that the poor get the rest. In practice, as we have seen in this country already, this is hardly the case. To vote for Trump would be to vote for a rich man whose interests are those of the rich minority, and not the interests of a vast majority of Americans.

Clinton, on the other hand, is a career politician, who has served both as a U.S. Senator and as the Secretary of State under President Barack Obama. In addition to these active roles in government, she played a passive role as First Lady during the term of her husband President Bill Clinton. It is, of course, long past due that the U.S. has a woman as president, however, Clinton's resume as a politician makes it clear that she may not be the person for the job. Because of this active political career, it is much easier to criticize Clinton for her policies than it is to criticize a political outsider like Trump. During Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State one of the most important aspects of American government was our foreign policy, specifically our policy regarding growing threats in the Middle East. In the U.S. foreign policy falls more squarely on the president than it does on any other branch of the federal government, in fact- due to certain deliberate loopholes in the law that states that Congress must authorize a declaration of war- the president has unilateral power to deploy the military without declaring war against a country. As Secretary of State, it was Clinton's job to advise the president on foreign policy matters. To this end, she assisted the president in forming a coalition that supported many rebel groups to fight against the inhumane but legitimate government of Syria, a sovereign nation, with no declaration of war. It is important to note that these operations began in 2011, and although ISIS existed before this, they weren't considered a threat until 2013. To this day there remains no declaration of war against Syria, as the government's stated goal in the region is not to fight the government of Syria, but to support the fight against terrorists operating in that country. Despite these stated goals, however, the government continues to support the rebels in their conflict with the Syrian government. It is apparent, then, that Clinton has little regard for the international laws that govern this type of warfare. Syria's government has committed human rights abuses, that cannot be argued against, but because the government is recognized as being sovereign and legitimate it against international law to wage war with them without a declaration stating that is what we're doing. Instead of declaring war then, Clinton's plan is to support the rebels, by arming them and by using a using a sustained campaign of airstrikes against the Syrian government, in order to skirt these international statutes. In doing so, however, she runs the risk of radicalizing the men and women who occupy the country of Syria as it seems to them that the U.S. is bringing war and destruction to their country. A vote for Clinton is a vote for ongoing war.