Confession: I haven’t voted in four years. The last time I bothered to fill out a voter’s ballot was for the presidential election in 1996.
Despite this, I have decided that this year I will open the ballot sitting on my desk. I will take the voter’s pamphlet and read through it. And, with luck, I will get it filled out and sent in on time. But before I tell you why I have had this sudden change of heart, I should probably explain why I haven’t bothered to vote in the past four years.
I must say that I have never allowed the belief that my vote didn’t count to keep me from voting.
I once heard a student say, “My vote doesn’t mean anything. I am just one person.” She was right. And I admit that my vote, by itself, doesn’t mean much. But votes are not individuals. They don’t stand by themselves. Your vote and my vote are combined and so are the votes of hundreds of other people. So they do make a difference when they all agree.
Apathy is not an issue either. All this talk about how apathetic our generation is toward voting and national issues never applied to me. I live in this state and I do care about what happens because it will affect everything around me.
No. The real problem is time, energy and priorities. In order to vote, I need to find the time and energy to research the issues and make the decisions that I feel are right and necessary based on the given information. These are the appropriate actions of a responsible voter. If I am going to take the time to vote, I want to do it right.
But on my long list of stuff to do, voting never appeared to be very close to the top. I mean, I have been a little preoccupied the past four years. Most of my time and effort (and money — but that’s another story) goes toward my education.
So now we have come to why I had this sudden change of heart. Well, it isn’t because I have more time or energy, because I have realized that is just not going to happen as long as I am in college.
The voter’s pamphlet is enough to scare anyone away from voting. I don’t know many college students with the time to read through that monstrosity. Of course, I could just read the small tidbits of information provided by all the various special interest groups. They could even tell me how to vote, so I don’t have to do any work at all. This option has always been unpalatable to me. If I couldn’t research the issues well enough to have an informed opinion in time to vote, I felt I shouldn’t vote. The idea of voting the way someone else thinks I should would make me feel like a puppet. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want anyone pulling my strings.
Actually, one of the reasons I decided to vote in this election is because of a change in my priorities. I realized that if I don’t vote, I can’t complain. In the past I have caught myself complaining about the outcome of various measures and laws that were passed. Then I realized that I had no right to complain, because I didn’t vote to stop those measures from passing.
You can’t complain about the way things are when you don’t do anything to try and change it. And I’m not talking about staging a coup or lobbying Congress. Nothing so grandiose. All that is needed is a vote. That’s all.
By voting, you may discover the public is not as stupid as you thought, and they all voted the same as you. Hope is renewed in the possibility that justice can prevail. If not, then voting earns you enough clout to yell, scream, stomp and turn red in the face when the measure you voted “no” on is passed. Regardless of the outcome, your reaction will be justified.
Time to turn in that ballot.