People Should Vote Forfeit The Right To Vote

People who do not vote forfeit their right to complain about politics. They spit in the face of every single person who fought for their right to vote, and in the faces of people who want to but can not vote. It is for the same reason that a child who says that they do not care what the family has for dinner should not complain when dinner is broccoli.

I became politically active in 2015, shortly after Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican Nomination. I saw his policy proposals online, but I could not believe that someone could seriously bring up such racist, xenophobic, and ridiculous ideas in a presidential campaign bid. Nobody thought Trump would win. But slowly Republican Primary Candidates dropped out of the race, leaving

The nerve of those people, for throwing their votes away like that when there were thousands of politically-minded people who had no way of voicing their opinions in politics. Many Americans seem to take the right to vote for granted and they do not see the harm in not voting. But the politically-minded who do not have that right know how important fulfilling the obligation to vote is. Non-citizen immigrants know. Ex-cons know. Minors know. People who are the victims of voter-suppression laws definitely know. But do the people who decided not to vote know? I argue that no, they do not. If they did know then they would pay attention and fulfil their duty as citizens eligible to

Some do not care about their obligation to vote. Some intend to vote, but forget to go to the polls. Some initially do not vote out of protest. Whatever their reason the result is the same: Their voice is not heard by the government, and their opinion is not accounted for. When a person does not vote, what the government hears is not,”I disagree with both parties therefore I will not side with one,” or “The Electoral College is corrupt and prevents the citizenry from actually participating.” The government does not hear their voices at all. Because they have not made their voices heard, even though the chance was available, they lose their right to voice an opinion. As a liberal in Texas, I understand why someone would look at the Electoral College and Winner-Takes-All based votes, and decide that it does not matter either way. One vote in Wyoming is worth three in California, and if you are red in a blue state or vice-versa it may feel hopeless. When I feel like that I remember that for a few glorious minutes on election day 2016, Texas turned blue. If one of the most conservative states, with the second-highest population (and therefore the more votes it takes to make an impact) can briefly flip to the other party, then what could have happened if more democrats had voted. Maybe the past nine months since January would have been very