First off, registering to vote is incredibly easy. If you've got a Colorado driver's license, registering to vote takes about two minutes using justvotecolorado.org. The deadline to register this way has passed for this election. You can also update your voter registration to a new address and still receive a mail-in ballot, which I'll talk about more momentarily. So what if you missed the deadline or don't have a Colorado driver's license? All you have to do is go down to a voting place (doesn't matter which one, just as long as it's in your county) and register to vote. You just have to have lived in the state for 22 days (which is not a new law). The deadline for this is, well, November 4th at 7pm.
You also can vote a ton of different ways. If you're registered to vote in Colorado, you receive a mail-in ballot which just has to be mailed in by October 31st or dropped off by November 4th at 7pm. If you're not registered yet, or your address is wrong, then you can, like I said, still do that and get your ballot...just be quick about it. If you miss that deadline or you like the experience of voting in person, you can vote early every day except Sundays at any polling place. Hours vary by location, but most seem to be 8am-5pm. Even if you're super busy and can't get there before election day, your employer is REQUIRED to give you time during election day to vote, and polling places are open from 7am to 7pm.
So despite the fact that voting is made super easy, people still aren't voting. There are people who make excuses: "I'm too busy," and people who flat out just don't want to vote. To those who don't because they think their vote doesn't matter: it does. If everyone thought that they shouldn't vote because they don't matter, no one would vote. Your vote helps make up a public opinion, and especially in a swing state, your vote matters so much. Often elections come down to a few thousand votes per county, which is absolutely ridiculous to think about when Denver has a population of nearly 650,000 people. To the people who think that voting has never changed anything, I'm sorry, but you're not right. You underestimate the power that voting has, not only for putting people in office but for things like a forty hour work week, public schools, and safe abortions. Because of voting, a black man has served two terms as President and Colorado/ Washington has legalized marijuana just in the past six years. Not voting is not rebellion. It is submission. If you don't vote, what right do you have to complain about anything that happens in the government? So what if it might not change anything? What if it does change something? That is why we must vote, because if we don't we are denying the possibility of that change.
People have fought, picketed, protested, and died for the right to vote and you dishonor their memory by not voting. How dare we disregard that sacrifice by not voting? We have fought for years to allow every person to vote. It has been less than a hundred years since all citizens have had the right to vote, and that citizens are not only white males. People have fought discriminatory voting laws that prevented minorities from voting even more recently, and some places where it still occurs, but here, in a state that makes voting so easy, people aren't voting.
Millennials of voting age (18-35) make up 23.5% of the population, while Baby Boomers make up 14.1% of the population (those 65+). The Millennial demographic is generally more liberal and progressive than the Baby Boomers, and Millennials have the ability to cancel out the Baby Boomer vote and then some. Unfortunately, if one thing is known, it's that Baby Boomers vote pretty much every year. Voter turnout for the 2008 election? 69% of Baby Boomers voted, while 51% of Millennials voted (NYTimes). This isn't to say that they weren't the same when they were the same age, and Millennials register to vote more often, but we have the potential to really change the political atmosphere. 36.3% of America's population is non-white. Demographics for the LGBTQA population are less clear since it's something people are less likely to admit, but these are all demographics that can be game changers in a big way, if we all turn out. Overall, America in general needs to exercise the main right that makes us a republic, not a dictatorship. We have the power to dictate what happens in regards to human rights, the environment, easier paths to education, our foreign relations, and everything else. We get to decide. We just have to vote.
To end, here's something to make you chuckle: dft.ba/-rockthevote
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