Tired Of The Presidential Race? 470 Reasons You Should Vote Anyway

Care about your kids’ schools? Legalizing marijuana? How much healthcare costs? Your personal budget? You might not realize that your local representatives work on these and many of the most critical issues that impact your life on a daily basis. Yes, your state legislature likely matters more to your daily life than what happens in DC.

It’s easy to miss this point since most of the news you’ll encounter every day in your Twitter feed is focused on big national races. State and local reports are way outnumbered.

So even if you’re sick of presidential politics, tune in on close-to-home issues that matter to you and your neighbors this November. Plus, there are often any number of referendums and initiatives on the table each Election Day that also have a big impact on how your state, city, and town are governed.

Yes, the presidential race is a slugfest, going all the way back to the primary season. It’s been a source of viral videos, bizarre quotes, big rallies, and incessant reporting. It tends to suck all the air out of the room.

So you might have missed the fact that ALL 435 House seats and 35 out of 100 Senate seats are up for grabs this year (hence those 470 reasons to vote). Not all of those are competitive races: some prognosticators say that only about 50 House seats and a dozen Senate seats will really be contested. But even so, that represents an enormous opportunity for change, even shifting the balance of power in Washington. So if you’re fatigued by presidential politics, look downticket for a chance to make change happen.

Almost every time we talk about voting, one of our fans inevitably points out that they don’t want to vote for either presidential candidate, so they’re not going to vote. Maybe you’re in this camp.

But we’re here to remind you that maybe, just maybe, you want to vote “against” a candidate instead of voting “for” another one. And that’s okay! You can channel those emotions, and relish the opportunity to mark your ballot for anyone other than that one candidate you can’t, for whatever reason, stand. It’s satisfying!

Who knew democracy could be so much fun?

Not a land-owner? Not a man? Not white? Chances are that in the past two hundred years, someone like you died for the right to vote. They felt the sting of being told their voice didn’t matter, and they weren’t good enough to have a say in important issues.

Let’s be honest—we owe a lot to them. Including a bit of our time on November 8^th.

But we also owe it to ourselves. Even today, and despite those sacrifices, the right to vote is being denied to too many Americans. So be sure to step up and show that citizenship is alive and well in the US, that as a free people in a free country, we will not ignore our hard-earned right to speak and be heard at the ballot box.

The media often, perhaps too often, likes to report on election-year races as though they were some kind of sporting event, but isn’t there a fundamental flaw in that approach? When we watch sports, we’re doing exactly that: watching. We’re in the stands or on the couch. But democracy demands participation. The people we elect aren’t there to entertain or wow us: they work for us. They are supposed to enact the will of the people—that’s us!

But when only a small percentage of the people show up to vote, how can that will be known? Politicians have no trouble figuring out what their giant corporate mega-funders want, and so regularly respond quite favorably to legislation that reflects the values of the very rich. The only way to counteract the power of Big Money is to get in the game, to show up and vote. When millions of ordinary Americans speak as one, our voice will be heard.