Good morning, John! Here in the United States, election season is upon us.
It's on the front page of the newspaper every day!
And I want to make it clear: from my perspective, there is only one wrong vote and that is no vote.
And I'm tired of people telling me their "good reasons" why they're not voting this year.
Almost all of the reasons that I hear are terrible!
So let's go through these terrible reasons one-by-one.
#1: "I don't live in America or am not yet 18".
Okay! You get a pass! You're the only one.
"Elections are controlled entirely by Superpacs and Special Interest Groups".
Oh...really? Cos, uh...I'm, uh, I'm a little confused. How many votes do Superpacs get?
That's right! ZERO!
You know how many votes the richest, most powerful man in America gets to cast? One.
He gets to cast one vote; the same number as you.
Voting is, if nothing else...it is fair.
"No election is ever decided by one vote. Mine can't matter!"
Okay. Voting, like almost everything that humans do, is a community activity.
The stuff you do...oftentimes, doesn't have an effect
unless you multiply it by all of the people who do it with you.
While one single vote might not count toward who wins the election,
every vote DOES count toward how politicians perceive their electorate: the people they represent.
An example: say a guy creates a YouTube video.
A bunch of people watch it. Half of them are Twihards and half of them are, like, BBC Drama fans.
If the Twihards leave comments 90% of the time and the Whovians leave comments 10% of the time,
then the person who makes the video will have no idea that all those Whovians are there
and so they will be much more likely in the future to make content for the Twihards.
Even if, after all is said and done, there are more Twilight comments, every single Doctor Who fan comment
counts towards that creator's desire to make content for those people.
Voting is the YouTube comments of government.
Also, this why commenting on YouTube videos is important, especially if you feel uncomfortable doing it,
because if you do, chances are your demographic is underrepresented in the comments and so I won't make content for you.
"I don't live in a swing state, so it's not gonna matter."
Nooooooooooooooooooo! NO! NO! NO!
If every Democrat in Utah or every Californian Republican decided not to go to the polls because "their vote didn't matter",
not only would they tremendously underrepresented in local elections, but worst: politicians would not
take those people's viewpoints into account, because what do they care if they don't vote?
"I just...don't have time!"
I can understand this to a certain extent. I've been there.
And I would like to encourage you to investigate early voting in your state because it's pretty easy nowadays in most places.
The top link of the description will take you to a place that will help you figure that out.
"But dude...everything is terrible."
I hear this a lot: that all politicians are terrible and that nothing ever changes,
but not only do I not believe it, it's, like, objectively untrue.
Like, interracial marriage used to be illegal and soon, gay marriage will not be illegal. I really believe that.
As inefficient and infuriating American democracy can be,
it is a pretty good system and has done pretty well by us.
Like, yes, we have made some terrible decisions in our past...but America is, overall, pretty great,
and democracy, I think, is one of the big reasons why that happened.
Final reason why you might not vote this November: "I'm not registered."
Yeah! That would be a problem, and there is a deadline and it is coming up
so go to the top link in the description if you are not registered to vote and register to vote!
NOW!
I personally think, and you are welcome to disagree with me, that voting in America isn't a privilege, it's a responsibility.
It's a responsibility that we have to our country, to ourselves, to our fellow Americans, to the rest of the world and to the future.
Because this country's laws, and what this country does, affects everything!
This is our opportunity to have the exact same amount of influence on the future of the world as...the richest, most powerful people in the country.
I can't believe people pass that opportunity up. John, I'll see you on Tuesday.