Jamie Douglas

I paid ten dollars just to vote. No, the cause wasn’t some arcane poll tax, or anything quite so outrageous. I simply received my absentee ballot two weeks before Election Day and discovered I had no stamps. So, with my jacket flapping and my hands clutched firmly in my pockets, I made my way across a darkened campus to purchase an overpriced packet of twenty first class stamps at the Crossroads HUB. To me, it was worth the time and the effort, because I voted.

For many people, especially those my age, that has not been true. In the last presidential election just 47% of us eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds pulled a lever or marked a ballot. You’ve heard the arguments against voting, and some even seem to ring true: Arguments such as, “Your vote won’t matter,” or, “They’re all the same anyway,” or even, “It won’t affect me.” No matter what you feel about President George W. Bush, his two terms in office have torn these arguments to shreds.

The presidency that has dominated my generation’s first political steps began in 2000. That election was decided by less than a few thousand votes cast in Florida. In 2004, it was decided by a few hundred thousand votes cast in Ohio. In 2008, we may yet see the election hinge on Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, or some combination of the four. This is to say nothing of house or municipal elections, where the margins of victory are often lower. You and several thousand other empowered citizens collectively decide elections.

Even if it doesn’t form the margin of victory, your vote should still matter to you. It’s a rare opportunity to make a personal statement about your part in a society, as well as the direction of your own future. A vote says that you matter, that everyone around you matters, and that your country matters. Countless self-help books, not to mention common sense, would advise asserting yourself and engaging in something bigger; there’s no better way than voting for candidates you pick.

We know that an Al Gore presidency would have been drastically different from that of President Bush. This administration chose to discount the effects of greenhouse gases, to invade Iraq, and to further deregulate our financial markets. Right or wrong, these are issues where the two men could hardly have been farther apart, and it is precisely these decisions which have directed the course of our nation in the last eight years.

The reality is that the choices made in an election affect you, and me, and everyone else. This college would not be the same without the millions of dollars spent by the government on NTID appropriations, student loans, and research grants. The bridges you drive on could not (and someday might not) exist without the continual aid of government. We’ve seen the case for both a sound national defense and the need for competent disaster response illustrated by the striking television images of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, now seared into our consciousness.

I’m not going to tell you, “It doesn’t matter who you vote for, just so long as you vote.” That would contradict my point. But I’m also not telling you who to vote for. Arranged on my ballot was a green party candidate, an independent, a libertarian, a democrat, and a republican. There was also a blank write-in line. These are all valid choices, and all, save for the blank line, have articulated ideas for our future.

To me it was worth ten dollars in stamps. For you, it might be a gallon of gas, a dollar for bus fare, or twenty minutes of your time. But whatever it’s worth, please make it worth something. Declare that you matter. Declare that we matter. Vote.