Why You Should Vote

Q: Why should I bother voting? Voters ask this question before every election, when they feel their vote can’t possibly count amongst millions of other votes.

A: 537 People decided the 2000 election.

And if that’s not a good enough reason, Starbucks is giving away free coffee to voters (and now Ben & Jerry’s wants in on the fun!). Those are the two important reasons to vote. You shouldn’t need any other reasons, but just in case you still need convincing, keep reading.

In the 2000 race between Bush and Gore, the vote came down to the little discrepancies. Some people didn’t push their ballots right, and a some people claimed their vote was taken wrong. These margins of error occure when the race is tight. If there is a landslide victory then these small margins of error are negated, and we avoid legal calamities that cause Gore to loose the election.

This leads to the next point: if your state is a solidly red state, one blue vote brings the race closer to being a swing state. When a state becomes a swing state, then the constituants of that state are given much more attention in the future, which leads to people making solid future choices, as opposed to just voting for whoever their neighbor votes.

The reverse is also true: If you are defending the state, your vote makes the election safer; a 5 point spread is fixable, a 15 point spread is not. And when all is said and done, even if your state is solidly against the person you’re voting for, your vote helps change the future president’s mandate and authoritative command.

But the necessity to show up on November 4th is not confined to just the presidential race. There are also U.S. Senate races, U.S. House races, state referendums, local referendums, state senator and/or representative races, mayoral and city council races, gubernatorial races, state and county judges and propositions. For instance, California has Proposition 8 on the ballot, which proposes the elimination of the rights for same-sex couples to marry. These state-level decisions are independent of whether your state is voting for your presidential candidate or not.

It’s important to remember that if you don’t vote, you don’t have the ability to discuss anything political. Not because there is a constitutional rule that bars you from being able to speak, but because your opinion doesn’t carry any weight if you were too apathetic to vote in the previous election.

If you have no other reason to vote, then you should vote to exercise your constitutional right of participating in the democratic process. Far too many people have sacrificed their lives for you to take your vote for granted; any apathy then undermines democracy.

Lastly, and my favorite reason: A British study found those with higher IQs vote more often. ^Source Though this is a statistical finding that doesn’t suggest a reason for this, the fact exists that if you don’t vote, it may be because you have a low IQ. So really, next time someone says they didn’t vote, it may just be because they are not as intelligent as you.