By Adam Przeslak, staff reporter.
In the heat of an election season that has been, to say at the least, very unique, there is a section of the voting age population left stumped. It all raises the question: Does voting really matter?
This election has brought into the spotlight the two must unfavorable candidates from the major two parties in history, republican, Donald Trump and democrat, Hillary Clinton. This leaves many displeased voters the options to either choose the lesser evil and vote for the least bad of the two, vote for a third party candidate such as Libertarian Gary Johnson or Jill Stein from the Green party, or don’t vote at all.
This is a free country. You, the voter, have all the choice in whether you’d like to make your voice heard in politics or not. However, the major argument of those who choose not to vote, is that their vote is pointless and it makes no difference in the matter. That is far from the truth though.
Let’s take a step in the past, back to 1960 during the election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The 1960 election was decided by .1 percent of the popular vote in favor of a young, John F. Kennedy. Every single vote counted and had just roughly 100,000 people decided not to vote for Kennedy in 1960 we would have seen about an eight year earlier Nixon presidency. This was the closest presidential election in American history.
Don’t even get me started on local elections. Voter turnout in local elections, especially those that don’t coincide with federal elections, are so dismal that it isn’t 100,000 non voters that could change the outcome, it’s more like 100 nonvoters. For example, just earlier this year, during the presidential and local primaries on Aug. 2, the fourth district of Bay County had two democratic choices to vote for in the primary for their district commissioner. Kim Coonan came out ahead of Thomas Matuszewski by a total of 193 votes to gain the democratic nomination.
Had 193 people decided to not show up to the polls that day the election easily could have swung the opposite way. So not only does the average voter’s opinion matter federally, but it has even more weight in the local elections.
There is also a moral sense to why voting is important, and that is because we were born in a time where we have the right to vote. In the past, only a select chosen few were privileged enough to have a right to casting a ballot. Earlier on many states made laws establishing that only white men that owned a sizable property, such as a farm or large house, could vote. This alienated lower class working white males, all females, and all nonwhites.
Later, after some changes at the state level, it became mainly just white men that were allowed to vote which, again, alienated women and minorities. African Americans technically gained the right to express their vote in 1870 by the 15th amendment although some states at the time passed laws requiring collection of taxes or literacy tests at polling booths making it extremely difficult to vote for African Americans.
Women only nationally gained this right in 1920, nearly 100 years ago now. Then, after much protesting and unrest during the civil rights movement, federal legislature was passed in 1965 to help eradicate clauses preventing African Americans from accessing voting booths.
Not even 100 years ago people were fighting and protesting for a right that some Americans today would rather ignore exists then utilize as a chance to change what they view wrong with this country.
Have we forgotten how far we’ve come to earn this right as a people that are united for the common good of the country we call home? I’m not telling you who to vote for, but what I am saying is that you need to make your voice heard or else there may come a day again where you won’t be able to.
