Nov. 8, to some, isn’t anything special. It’s a birthday to some, but it should mean a lot to everyone above the age of eighteen in the United States of America. It’s election day, and many people think that elections only happen every four years, when they actually happen every year.
Last year, as everyone waited for the votes to come in, constituents bit their nails as they found out who the new president was, many failed to realize that it was not just that single vote that would change the nation, it’s all of the votes along the way too.
The presidential election isn’t the only election. As a nation, that’s the big one, but it’s also the one that requires the most effort, that requires all of the attention people can give. It’s a job that can control the nation, how we, as a country, are seen by other nations. That man (or hopefully, in the future, woman) has the power to make treaties with other countries (with the limitation of the Senate’s approval) and has control of our nuclear weapons. We should take extra care when choosing who gets the job.
But we don’t pay enough attention to the little elections. The ones citizens actually have more of a voice in. Like the county and state elections or even the Senate or Congress elections.
Way back when the founding fathers wrote the constitution (which is different from the Declaration of Independence, contrary to popular belief), they made sure that the people could have a say in who was ruling them, but many levels of the government are set up so that some of them are close to the people. There are multiple levels of government, state and national.
Just because Americans feel they “don’t have a voice” in the major elections doesn’t mean that they should just give up. The people’s vote does count, even if it doesn’t look like it. Americans run on a majority system, and that vote could be the one that tips the scales in the presidential election – the only one that people actually care about.
And because so many think that their vote won’t do much there, they don’t attend the smaller elections each year. These smaller ones are for our spokesmen and women as a people. They’re the ones that tell the government what citizens want as a whole, and if the public, doesn’t pay attention at the smaller levels, it’ll be too late when they’re passing a law that people don’t want, all because they didn’t watch who went into office.
Every vote counts. Americans wouldn’t be given one if it didn’t. The government will changed regardless of voter turnout. That’s a vote Americans waste that plenty of people have fought for, so they must use it. Honor the country and the past by voting, and actually registering to vote, not just throwing away the chance to do something every four years when people may not like who’s on the ballot.