The Right To Vote

Women, African Americans, and 18 year olds have fought throughout history for the right to vote. Now that we have it, we should be educating and exercising our right to vote every chance we get. Well, as a 16 year old High School Senior in America, I am surrounded by 18 year old students who feel like their vote won’t matter. In some ways, it won’t. But in the 2008 election, young voters were a key part in electing the first African American President of the United States.

Houston, We Have a Problem

I think a major problem with my country’s democracy is that many people are apathetic. They look at two candidates like Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and decide “eh oh well, we’re screwed regardless.” In fact, the Google search “how to move to Canada” had a 1000% increase after Super Tuesday. As funny as that is, instead of wasting time figuring out how to leave the country, people should be spending their time getting educated on the candidates and the issues. Regardless of how you feel about America’s general election candidates, when you think about it, we have no one to blame but ourselves. Everyone in the country was given a vote, and some people chose not to use it. If we want our Democracy to work more like the way it was intended to, the American people need to start educating themselves and voting for what is within their best interest.

Compared to other countries around the world, US Voter Turn Out is extremley low. So low, that in 2015 Pew did a study that ranked the United States 31 out of 34 based on the amount of citizens voting. Clearly, this is an issue. On the surface, it shows that the American people don't care. But when you look into it, there are so many more reasons why people don't vote other than disinterest. Many people find it hard to take off work in order to get to the polls. Furthermore, people find it hard to spend ample ammounts of time educating themselves. Not everyone has the luxury of working 9-5 and comming home for a nice nap. Regardless of the excuse, US voter turn out is an issue that needs to be addressed.

How to Fix Voter Turn Out

There have been many proposed ideas to try to increase the number of people going to the polls. One, would be allowing people to vote on the weekends rather than in the middle of the work week. Since many people do not get off work to vote, this would give people who have few vacation days or people who can't afford to take a day off of work more time to get to the polls. Along with that, there's been the idea of the rest of the country following Oregon's voting system, which allows everyone to fill out a mail-in ballot. Compared to other states, Oregon has a substantially better voter turn out.

Here's the article about the Google Search Increase.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/google-searches-move-canada-spike-super-tuesday-results/story?id=37337658

#Vote #UnitedStates #America #Election #VoterTurnOut