The Importance of Voting

Voting can change the world. That in and of itself makes voting important. However, it’s important to go more in-depth with why it’s important to vote. Most of the readers here are probably newly minted 18-year-olds who have either thought extensively about voting or haven’t thought about voting at all, or you might not even know it’s something that you can do. It may sound idiotic to some of you, however, to be fair, I myself didn’t know you could vote at 18 until a few years ago, so lets tone down the judgment, please and thank you. To also add to my last remark, not everybody cares about voting as much as others, and some people, and I won’t name names, think that we could all do without voting, that it’s problematic and a waste of their time. And that folks is why I’m here to give you all some info. To maybe, possibly, hopefully, change your minds, if you are in fact not a believer. 

To actually, officially kick things off, here’s a little history lesson. In 1789, states were granted permission to create voting requirements, the people allowed to vote were property-owning and/or taxing white males. 1790, the Naturalization Act gives free, white persons outside the United States to become citizens but does not give rights to vote. From 1792 to 1838, free black males lose the right to vote in several northern states. The 1828 presidential election was the first in which non-property holding white males in the vast majority of states voted. In the 1830s voter turnout soared, reaching about 80% of adult white males. 1870, the 15th amendment prevents the states from denying the right to vote on the grounds of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” In 1920, white women were finally granted the right to vote, but women of color are still not able to. In 1924, all Native Americans were granted the right to become citizens and vote, regardless of tribal affiliation. In 1943, Chinese immigrants were given rights to become citizens and vote. It’s also not clear on when women are color were given the right to vote, but even if they were allowed to vote in 1920, they were treated like garbage, and they weren’t counted like the white people voting. I got all my information for the timeline from Wikipedia. 

To accurately catch the importance of voting, you have to think about all of the things that have happened in the past and all of the things that continue to happen. For example, a large majority of Trump voters voted for trump because they didn’t want Hilary to be in a powerful position. Brett Kavanaugh was voted onto Supreme Court because he was a rich white male that was conservative.

Voting is important because it not only affects most of you closely, but it can also decide the future of most of the world for however long they’re in office. If one is voted for president and wins, they can be in office for two terms or up to 10 years. As children, we don’t get a choice, but as we grow up and start paying attention to polls and the voting years, we start forming our opinions on how a good president performs, acts, lives, and survives. Voting is important because if you want someone that is, in your opinion, a good person or candidate to be president, it’s your chance to try and make it happen. 

In more simple, generalized terms, voting impacts people personally and heavily. Voting can be a tool that heavily influences the direction that the future social structure and society could go in. When you vote, keep in mind the change you’d like to see, because no matter how hard change may be, it is important to know that we must change in order to better any kind of world for ourselves and the people around us and possibly the people we’d like to bring into the world. Think about the kind of social construct you’d like to live in, and the things that bother you, and then look at the people that want to be voted for office, do they look like they could make a change? Is it the change you want to see? 

Just remember, when voting, we’re thinking about the change we’d like to see, and that we’re creating the change.