Vote!

Vote!

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Yes, this is a rant. It's been a long time in coming, but it has percolated within me for quite a long time now, and needs to be let out.

I keep hearing people talk about how they don't like any of the candidates, so they don't plan to vote. Like that will make a difference. It will allow someone else to make the decision for you. It will allow someone else to make the decision about who makes it into office to represent you.

You realize, don't you, that a candidate will be elected, whether or not you vote? What makes a difference is that if you vote for the candidate you want, your candidate has a much better chance of making it into office.

And I mean a real vote.

Voting for Mickey Mouse (or the cartoon/television character of your choice) isn't helping. Some other, human, candidate will be elected, and your voting would have been absolutely pointless. Is that what you really want?

Being an American citizen not only gives you the Right to vote, it gives you the Responsibility to vote. The founders of this Country fought long and hard to deliver us from a monarchy to a democracy. A great many of them lost their freedom or their lives in the pursuit of this goal.

The majority of those of who fought and died aren't truly remembered. We remember the ones who signed great documents. Who had poems written about their exploits. But not the ones who really fought in the trenches. Those for whom democracy was so important that it was worth their very lives to achieve it.

Instead, we sit back and bitch and piss and moan about how we don't like the system. We don't like the candidates, or the politicians who currently represent us. And we do nothing about it except bitch!

We seem to forget that we have the ability to choose new representation. We have that right. Given to us through the efforts of those who fought and died to give it to us. And what do we do? We waste it. And the number of people who actually vote in each election goes down further and further each year. Voter apathy is atrocious.

Stupid.

What a terrible thing to do with a gift so dearly won. A slap in the face to those who fought so hard for their children and grandchildren, and for the children and grandchildren of people they never even knew. That they would have a better future.

If you don't like your representation, vote the rascals out! You have that ability. Don't give a small number of voters the ability to choose your representation for you. Exercise your Right and Responsibility.

Vote!