Its+Not+Just+Your+Right+its+Your+Duty

As young adults quickly approaching our eighteenth birthdays, our lives are swamped with homework, projects, sports, clubs, jobs, and the dreadful college applications. All things we are told will help guide our future down the right path. We are constantly being informed that the amount of effort we put in now will reflect on us always. What we are not told, at least not enough, is that in order to really ensure a bright future for ourselves we need to look bigger, we need to recognize national issues, we need to register, and we need to vote.

"Why should I vote when the Electoral College picks the president anyway?" This is one question that I myself used to ask. I never fully understood the process. Yes, the Electoral College makes the final vote but their vote is highly influenced by the popular vote in the state. Very rarely does each representative's vote not match up with the vote of the majority. So yes, the popular vote does matter - each and every vote - and if every person had the outlook that it did no, then well, it wouldn't and we would leave our decision making to one very small group of people.

"How am I supposed to choose? They all seem the same to me." The exact reason for why the electoral college exists. Ignorance is a choice. Inform yourself. Get out there and learn about each candidate, see where they stand on the topics for which you are most passionate about. When the voting system was invented, they let the Electoral College choose because they did not let the "ignorant masses" choose the leader of our country. Do not be a part of the ignorant masses. Watch the debates, read the news, make a difference.

“But I’m too busy, I don’t have time for this!” Too busy for what? Too busy to choose the person who can change the way your live is ran for the next four years? Too busy to select that person, whose decisions can be intact for years to come, to not even affect the way you live but everyone for generations to come? Registration can be done in your own home; all it takes is a pen, maybe five minutes and a stamp to mail it out. It can be done in school, again taking only five minutes. The actual voting, you may have to wait on line for a few minutes and then again take another five to enter your decisions. But aren’t those few minutes small enough a sacrifice in order to exercise your right to vote and your right to choose the people who will forever leave a mark upon this country?

In the last presidential election only 52% of young adults chose to vote. Now this number is not just of the eighteen to twenty year olds. This number is a percent of all Americans ages eighteen to thirty. That election in 2004 marked the first year since 1972 that the percentage did not decrease. This age group has the lowest turnout yet is the group who has to live with the decisions the longest. Why shouldn’t we, as the next generation, the generation of tomorrow, choose our tomorrow? We should, and we can. Yet half of us - just don’t.