Why You Need to Vote Tomorrow

Many people have been telling me that they don’t plan on voting tomorrow because their vote doesn’t matter or they already know who will win.

If you are using either of these excuses tomorrow- I am officially calling you out.

First of all, regardless of what anyone tells you, your vote does matter. In the primaries, only 20% of New York’s Democrats and Republicans voted. Now while you may say, “but Jean, that was only the primaries, and only two of the parties,” I am still alarmed by the low voter turnout in this state and am not feeling very hopeful that we will have extraordinary turnout tomorrow either. This fear is based on the lack of concern of many registered NY voters. If every voter thought that everyone else was voting and that their vote wasn’t necessary, we would all be in a lot of trouble. Sadly, we are not far from that. As a matter of fact, in 2009, only 26% of registered voters voted in New York during the last mayoral election. How low will voter turnout be this year, another mayoral election, when most people don’t believe their vote will actually impact results?

Fun fact:  Joe Lhota won the Republican primary with approximately 2,000 votes less than Anthony Weiner in the Democratic primary.

Voting is one way for citizens to show the government the will of the people. How are elected officials or the government as a whole supposed to even begin to grasp the will of the people when the people don’t even vote? We, as the people, need to show what we want and show there are consequences for actions. Were you extremely displeased with an elected official’s actions in office? Vote against them! Even if you believe they will be reelected, voting against them affects their approval rating. This goes into the next deterrent to voting- that the winners of the election are already decided. I need to first explain that there are more than two parties. Many people believe that outside of the two main parties, nothing matters. This does not have to be true. This is the same city that had an independent for Mayor (Bloomberg) and has a substantial amount of third party choices. Even if the other party has a low chance of winning, if you wanted them to win, you should still vote for them. A party will never have momentum if no one supports it in the polls. I constantly hear people complaining about the political environment and how they desire change- however we fall into the same cycle of a binary party system and ignore any other choices. Focusing on only two choices does not make the voting process simpler and in fact makes it so much harder to fully support a candidate! That being said, I am not giving you a break on election day if you are part of the two larger parties- your support (or lack thereof) will affect how the party moves forward in some way, even if it’s miniscule. Voting is the lowest risk/highest reward action you can commit on your Tuesday. You spend a short amount of time on a line, pull some levers, and your opinion is taken into account. The risk: the person you voted for may not win. The reward: At the very least, for once in your life, your opinion was asked, considered and used to determine who will represent you and your community for the next term. It takes me longer to get a haircut than it does to vote- can you really claim that it wasn’t worth your time?

Now that I’ve ranted about why you should still vote- seriously it takes only a couple of minutes and it’s a really small and easy way to be involved- I will give you voting information.

Polls are open from 6am-9pm. For your voting information, please refer to the official NY voter public information.  If you want information on the candidates, you can refer to my previous posts, or check out the voter guide from the NYC Campaign Finance Board.

Until next time,

Your (hopefully) favorite political blogger, Jean Dorak