As this time of year rolls around — with another election on our doorstep — I feel obligated to encourage others my age to get out and vote.
I’ve heard all of the common responses.
Elections are rigged.
My vote doesn’t matter.
It takes too long.
I forgot.
All of those reasons, and others like them, are just petty excuses for being too lazy to take 20 minutes to go vote.
Elections are important. Yes, we’re all minuscule pistons in a bigger machine. But every vote matters, and if every young person went out and voted, we would have a near monopoly on shaping the future of the political landscape in this country.
The vast majority of registered voters today are younger. Fifty-nine percent of registered voters are Gen Xers, Millennials or “post-millennials.”
That number is shocking if you think about the way elections usually shape up.
Despite the fact that we, as young adults, are the clear majority of the voting-eligible population, we, for some reason, allow our grandparents and great-grandparents decide our futures.
We are the ones who will have to live the rest of our lives with decisions that are made today. No matter how you view politics, there are long-term, structural issues that need to be confronted today so that we still have an amazing country to grow old in. You should have a say in those issues.
We are the ones who will have to face the dire realities of a changing climate.
We are the ones who will have to pay off a now-$21.6 trillion debt.
We are the ones who will have to deal with a society crippled by student-loan debt.
We are the ones who may face an insolvent Social Security system unable to care for us when we’re old.
You may not be the most politically engaged person on the planet. None of us are. But you can easily take 30 minutes to research the candidates on November’s ballot.
You may have a lot of things going on, and you may think you have other important things to do. But there’s nothing more important than our collective future.
Go vote.
If you haven’t moved your registration, you can request an absentee ballot up to 5 days before election day. More information is available at vote.org. More information about polling places and absentee ballots is available at alabamavotes.gov.
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Chip Brownlee, senior in journalism and political science, is the editor-in-chief of The Auburn Plainsman.
