A lot of people in my immediate circle of friends and family know very little about politics beyond the basics. Many of them don’t vote. Some think it’s bullshit, don’t understand the system or think it’s on some Illuminati/masonry stuff.
Apparently, it’s not just my click. Almost 92 million eligible Americans did not vote in the 2016 presidential elections.1 In the 2014 midterm elections, an estimated 143 million eligible Americans failed to vote, marking the lowest voter participation in 72 years.
My first attempt at voting came when Obama stepped on the scene for the very first time. Couldn’t vote for the actual election because I wasn’t a registered voter. I felt bad for not being part of the movement to put the first Black president in office. The second time around I was good to go. But I still didn’t vote. I was confident he’d win without me, so I simply didn’t make use of the time available to me. Which is a shame since, in NY, employees have two hours paid time in their workday to vote. There really wasn’t an excuse.
But I was feeling like the majority of the people I know, that our votes really don’t matter so why waste time like that. Then Trump and Hillary were running and the only better solution was Bernie Saunders. I hit the polls and voted for him. It was fast and simple. I was both proud and ashamed for missing out on 18 years of voting! Then I got a letter in the mail saying the primary candidate I voted for didn’t win so my vote didn’t count. I felt irrelevant again. But not discouraged. I voted in this September’s primary election and I plan on voting again this Tuesday.
Why? Why not? There is nothing to lose. As I was researching why so many people of color do not vote I found a great article from 2009 that discusses what happens when we do.
The article states that in the 2009 elections when everyone was keeping a close watch on Bloomberg dropping a hefty $102 million on campaigning for his third term in office, attention was also brought upon “a seismic political shift that so far has gone largely unnoticed: Black, Hispanic and Asian residents made up a majority of voters in a citywide race for the first time.”
All of a sudden we were making a difference.
The article further confirmed that “Legal immigrants are exploding in population and are increasingly registering” once they become citizens “and are now voting,” said Bruce N. Gyory, a political consultant. All the room for growth in the electorate is amongst Hispanic, Asian, biracial and black New Yorkers.” So we’re not just at the polls but also putting more of us in positions of power.
That was nine years ago. Where are we now?
According to Brookings, a nonprofit in Washington, DC. that does an in-depth analysis of trends affecting us locally, nationally and globally, we are growing immensely.
The more and more I tried to prepare for this post by learning as much as I could to write one to perhaps enlighten if only a smidge of the 92 million eligible, non-voters about this November’s election, the more and more I realized how much I didn’t know about politics.
Who is in the House? How many seats are there in it? Who gets to sit there?
Who are our assembly and councilmen and what do they do?
Felt like I was going into a rabbit hole.
Days were going by and I still couldn’t sum up all of my research to make a worthy informative piece. Which made me realize how much we aren’t taught in school about our government’s intricacies so that voting would be second nature to us all. But it’s not.
Thank the heavens for the internet!
There’s no use crying over spilled milk so let’s just thank goodness for the internet and make better use of it. We can all educate ourselves on just about any topic with the quickness and if you feel you don’t have enough time in your life to read, you can even google time management tips.
You can also google all the fucked up shit that happened to African-Americans when they were risking their lives to finally be allowed to vote and the struggles they endured when they tried to exercise their right. Some foul play at the polls still exists now in certain states, although nothing nearly in comparison to the past, yet still worth mentioning and to look out for.
Let’s keep all that fresh in our minds and go against the grain as a payback and tribute to all those that couldn’t vote or fought with their lives to have the privilege we now take for granted. This post may not convince you as to who to vote for but I hope it can at least make you think about why you are not voting in the first place and what you need to do to become more informed.
So far, it seems like there are way too many Republicans in the house and this is why Trump is doing whatever he wants. They stick together. So let’s shake that up a bit and level up the playing field. Let’s make shit interesting. Let’s give them something to talk about, let’s change history.
For too long Blacks and Latinos have been complaining about injustices and the lack of better representation but we aren’t doing enough to cause the change needed. Something as simple as voting is a great and near effortless start. Do something different. You never know, you might meet the love of your life at the polls or run into someone from your community you might need to network with. You will never know until you actually try.
Queen of Alchemy 