Public school lied to me.
I sat in Social Studies and government classes for 13 plus years, hearing first and foremost that every vote counts, along with other encouraging and inspiring words about "why I should go vote" and "everything that's wrong with the world will get better."
In reality, my vote doesn't count. Chances are, your vote doesn't count either.
In the last Presidential election, 80% of the votes cast had zero impact on the election. Votes only mattered in swing states, so about four out of fifty states actually elected the President.
As far as red and blue states go, it's a lie. The whole country is a mix of both. In the last election, 20 of Texas's votes should have been Democratic, and over 30 of California's should have been Republican. But if you are on the side of the losing party, you may as well not vote at all.
According to public schools, the electoral college is a perfect system that follows exactly what We The People want them to do. They vote how we vote but in reality, half of the states' electors can vote however they want.
For a solid, easy-to-understand explanation of all of this, check out this segment of Adam Ruins Everything.
As long as we have the electoral college, everyone in the country could go cast a vote and the popular vote could lose.
This terrifies me.
There are violent deaths every day and our country has drawn strict lines to divide itself-- lines where everyone is alienated against all the other areas secured by the other lines.
Race, religion, political preferences, gender, and even battles within our own genders divide us. Stay at home moms fight with other stay at home moms over the best parenting techniques. Women who love makeup fight with women who hate makeup. Feminists fight with non-feminists. Men and women are pitted against each other. Republicans and Democrats are pitted against each other, and they are pitted together against Libertarians and other third party followers. Blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians are weary of each other and they do hateful things to each other. We are fighting the very people whose duty it is to protect us, hating the police officers who (mostly) want to save our lives.
According to public school, if we all go out and vote, we can pick a leader who will unite us and save our country. He or she will do whatever is necessary to protect the USA. He or she will be honest and forthcoming and morally upright and everything will be a bed of roses.
But look at our candidates.
One is a liar who is responsible for the deaths of our very own US citizens, who is passive-aggressively racist and classist. One is blatantly racist and has spewed hateful words about our very own US citizens and plans to act on those hateful words. And no matter how we all vote, everyone seems to be sure that Hillary will win, despite the (very surprising) amount of Trump supporters. Even if Trump wins the popular vote, it seems Hillary will get whatever she wants, including the Presidency. After all, she got off scot-free for jeopardizing national security.
I'm scared and disappointed.
I've had a false sense of security for years, believing that our country is always just and upright, fair and democratic.
Where is the democracy now? What happened to us? Why is the "Greatest Country In The World" living in fear of its own people? Or of terrorists who seem to easily penetrate our greatest defenses? Or of our own Presidential candidates and what they will do?
If we cannot vote on a candidate who will magically cure everything, we must change ourselves.
We cannot afford to hate each other. We cannot afford to say horrible things about each other. We cannot afford to be classist, racist, misogynist, or misandrist. We cannot fight each other.
If we don't unite and love each other, who will unite us? Certainly not Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. If we want change, we must first change our hearts.
We need to change our hearts if we want to change the world around us.
We desperately need to change the world around us.
