Don't Abuse Your Right to Vote

I hadn't even made it to my first class of the day when one of them caught me:  as I walked into Thomas Building, an aggressively enthusiastic girl in a bright orange shirt stopped me at the door.  "Have you voted yet?!"  "It's 9am... I haven't even showered yet," I wanted to tell her.  Instead, I shook my head politely and took the slip of paper she handed me, pretending to listen to her instructions about how to vote online for the next University Park Undergraduate Association President.  The slip, also bright orange, read only a candidate's name and the web address to the voting site.  I received a duplicate of the piece of paper from the same girl on my way out of Thomas.  All day long, this happened.  Every building I entered, every street corner I passed, another one stopped me in my tracks.  "Have you voted yet?!"  By lunchtime, I learned to avoid the HUB completely; it was absolutely covered with those orange shirts.  "Have you voted yet?!"  Finally, around dinner time, I was headed towards Pollock Commons and noticed two of them guarding both ends of the sidewalk:  it was literally impossible to pass through unnoticed.  I proceeded, and when the guy popped the question I had already heard 12 times that day, "Have you voted yet?!," I had finally had enough.  "Yeah, I did!" I responded.  He gave me a high-five and let me go.  I didn't care that I had lied and I hadn't actually voted... I was just relieved to have made it through without having another dreaded slip of paper forced into my hand.

Yes, I know that the United States was created for the sake of democracy so that every citizen can have a say in government.  Yes, I know that, as a female, there was an entire women's rights movement in which thousands of people fought for my right to vote.  Yes, I know that my failure to vote was disrespectful to everyone who worked so hard to make voting a possibility and to everyone under other governments who desperately wants to and cannot vote.  (I'm talking national elections now, but you get the point.)  Wouldn't it have been more disrespectful had I voted without following the campaign, without knowing what each candidate stood for?  Each and every vote influences an election (no matter how small that influence may be.)  For me to sway the poll with a random vote for the sake of voting would be unfair to those who did their research and casted informed ballots.

I wonder how many of the students who voted yesterday chose a candidate because they actually understood and agreed with that person's beliefs and intentions.  How many casted their ballots haphazardly because some overly peppy orange shirt handed them a slip of paper with a candidate's name?  Would the results of the election be different if every voter had made an informed decision?  If ignorant voters found out what their chosen candidate stood for, would they wish they had made a different choice?

It is every citizen's (student's in the case of university elections) duty to utilize their right to vote.  However, if a voter is uniformed, I believe it is their responsibility to decline that right.  I wish that I had followed the elections so that I could have helped to choose a leader for my university, and I hope that I can be a better citizen come the Presidential elections in November.  However, I do not regret my choice to abstain from voting, because my uninformed choice may have been a regrettable one.

Do not listen to those orange shirts.  Vote because their is a certain candidate you want to be represented by, not because you were handed a slip of paper with a certain candidate's name.  Please do not abuse you're right to vote.