Election Day

In case you have been living under a rock, today Americans will stand in line and cast their vote to elect a new president. Along with the Presidential election, American citizens will also vote for local and state politicians. For weeks, newscasters, analysts and bloggers have been discussing who will win and what the important issues are. In all the blogs that I have read, this is the point where I am supposed to give you my opinion of who the best candidate is and who I will be voting for.

However, I am not going to do either of those things. The problem with telling someone who to vote for is simple. It's so simple that you will laugh. You see I will not tell you who to vote for because the issues that are important to me are not automatically going to be important to you. We get this idea in our head that the candidate we agree with the most is the candidate for everyone. Obviously this is not true. If it were true, there would be no need for separate political parties and months of campaigning.

Am I going to tell you who I am voting for? No. Am I going to tell you the issues that are important to me? No. I will be honest and say that I am ready to get this election behind us. I am tired of the debates, the commercials, and the signs littering local yards and the sides of streets. So what am I going to tell you? I am going to tell you that I am not voting this year. Now before you tell me how horrible this is let me explain. First I would have to vote by absentee ballot. My vote would only count if it came down to a run off. By the way, considering there are over a 100,000 men and women in the armed forces that are having to vote absentee this year, I may just come back to this subject another day. Yes over 100,000 votes that won't count. Again will come back to that later.

But to stay on topic, let's explore another side of voting. As a woman, I value and do not take lightly the privilege to vote. I believe that the women that sacrificed to get us the vote sacrificed so that we would have options. They believed in a world where women would be have an equal voice in government. All Americans have been bombarded for months about exercising your voice by voting. There is another way to exercise your voice. Hold onto your pants because this is going to be a shocker. You can make a statement by not voting. Will it make much of one? Probably not, but if all Americans that were unhappy with the options that have been presented to them chose not to give in and vote for the lesser of two evils stood up and refused to vote. Well that might make a difference.

Am I telling you not to vote? No that's not what I am doing. I am encouraging you to stand up and raise your voice. If that means, voting for the candidate that you feel is best for you then vote. If you are ok with choosing the candidate that is enough in line with what is important to you then vote. However if you can't come to terms with either candidate because you just don't feel that either one of them represent what is truly important to you then don't vote. Many people will disagree with me, but personally I think exercising your voice by not voting in some cases is as important as voting.