We Need to Talk About the Election, Again

After everything we’ve seen since this year, it should be incredibly evident that voting is important and something you should do.

Over the last few months, I have heard from some people that they are not planning on voting in this election, which I get. I highly disagree, but I get it. Neither of the main candidates is someone I can unequivocally support, one is a fascist and the other has more than a shotty history. I’m also not a fan of the idea of voting third-party, especially not in an election as high stakes as this one. However, you would have to be incredibly short-sighted to look at an election as high stakes like this one and say you are perfectly happy not voting in it.

We’ve watched a lot of things happen over the last four years. Racists and fascists feel comfortable being racist and fascist out loud, in fact, they get called great people. The president and a foreign government worked together to mess with the election and they got away with it. Migrant families have been separated from each other and held in concentration camps detention centers. Those same women have been forcibly given hysterectomies. This past summer has been one of pain and 45 has done nothing to ease what we’ve been feeling. Over 200,000 people have died this year on the president’s watch and all Tr*mp can say about it is that more people would have died if Biden was in charge. Tr*mp and his supporters have been saying for months that all these things and more would happen if Biden was in charge, but Biden isn’t in charge, Tr*mp is, and it will continue to happen if we don’t vote Tr*mp out of office.

People have literally died for us to have the right to vote, and you want to say it would be fine for you to not vote? After watching the last four years, you think not voting is okay? Watching the last ten months makes things feel safe enough to not vote? I know that increasing the number of voters may not help, Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million votes in the 2016 election and still managed to win because of the electoral college (abolish the electoral college). However, that doesn’t change the fact that voting is important.

If you don’t have the time to vote in person, I get it. Jobs and schools don’t exactly give time for you to stand in line for possibly hours to vote. But voting by mail is an option. But if you’re going to say that you’re not going to vote because your vote does not matter or just because one option is a fascist and the other option is cool with cops, then you need to rethink the reasonings.

Biden doesn’t have the perfect past, but we can see how he has become a better politician. Biden cares about helping Americans of all backgrounds. He cares about our access to healthcare and women maintaining our right to choose. He cares about the environment and climate change and listening to scientists about the virus.

And I’ll be completely honest, if you still say you’re not going to vote because you don’t like Biden or you want to vote for a better candidate, I don’t know how you could say that Biden isn’t better than a fascist. I don’t want to hear you say anything about how you wish things were different or better. You have the chance to make your voice heard and to change things now. Don’t say you wish things were different and not do what you can to change them. Voting is the chance we have to advocate to make things better--use this chance that you have.

I’ve never imagined that the first time I voted in a presidential election would be in an election like this, but here we are. I want 45 out of office and I voted for it. You want things to be different, vote for it. It’s activism on paper.