Major political waves are rolling in for their final crash this week. No matter who wins this election, a large portion — if not half — of our country is going to be pretty upset with the results. Considering how widely disliked both candidates are, though, there's a large amount of Americans who don't plan to vote, are massively undecided, or are (in my opinion) throwing away their votes on third party candidates or write-ins. But let's focus on those who don't plan to vote.
Don't be a lazy American. Exercise your right to vote!
If you don't vote, you don't get to complain. That's not just my motto — theSkimm has been working hard to register people to vote with their "no excuses" campaign.
theSkimm, co-founded by Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin in 2012, is a start-up designed to "make it easier to be smarter." Essentially, they send out a daily newsletter by email that consolidates the top news stories of the day into a skimmed down version. Hence, theSkimm.
In addition to the newsletters, which are written with a side of sass and sarcasm, their website contains skimmed down versions of any important topic Americans should understand.
The best part is they dedicated an entire page of their website to skimming the vote 2016 to answer any and all questions you may have about how to vote, who the candidates are and the positions they stand for, the issues of the election, an explanation of election terms, a calendar of election events and an explanation of swing states.
Since election day is upon us, anyone who is still unsure of who to vote for should check out The Candidates and The Issues. Weisberg and Zakin began reaching out to all presidential candidates for interviews at the beginning of the primary season. Of our two current candidates, they were only able to get an interview with Hillary Clinton. Since Donald Trump's campaign declined an interview, they used statements of his from previous interviews.
The Candidates page is set up as a side-by-side comparison between Clinton and Trump of personal facts, the issues and where they stand, the Vice Presidential candidates, and their references. Under their personal facts, there's a button you can click to read more in depth about each candidate. Because Clinton accepted theSkimm's invitation for an interview, the "read more" option brings you to the actual interview — which is set up like any other job interview! Maybe it's just me, but I think that's awesome.
The Issues page dives into the main issues of the election, including immigration, abortion, civil rights, climate change, gun control, education, foreign policy/ISIS and the economy. Each issue has its own box that addresses the issue and gives Clinton and Trump's positions. The boxes also have a "read more" option, which brings you to a page that gives a more in depth explanation of the issue.
I kid you not, reading up on the issues through theSkimm shouldn't take you more than an hour, which gives you plenty of extra time to sit and ponder the information your brain has just absorbed to make an informed decision.
theSkimm has worked long and hard on its "no excuses" campaign. They ended up registering a whopping 110,000 voters — 95,000 of which were women. If only there was a way to know how those 95,000 women could affect the election…oh wait, there is because theSkimm took a survey of randomly selected readers and analyzed the data, focusing in on the 3,000 female millennials that responded.
The results?
They're With Her. But not just because they're all especially liberal. A quarter of them are undecided voters looking to third party options. And the percentage of female millennials looking at third party options is equal to the percentage supporting Trump — 8 percent.
The best news is only 3 percent of female millennials are not voting this election. The rest of them are more than ready to show up at the polls.
There is no excuse good enough to skip out on voting, especially with theSkimm's breakdown of the information. I agree it sucks to have to vote defensively instead of adamantly behind one candidate or the other, but this is our right as Americans. We rule by the people, and the people can only rule if they vote.
