Imagine. You are playing a battle game. You have one mission in this game, and that is to defeat one specific person. What could happen if you didn’t show up to complete your mission? The person you were supposed to defeat gets through into your territory and destroys your base while you were off doing something else. This is why you need to vote.
Comparing voting to a video game may seem a little far-fetched, but it’s not. When you vote you, are not trying to defeat the enemy, you’re canceling out a member of the opposing team. If you don’t show up, and a friend doesn’t show up, and their friend doesn’t show up, then as a team you don’t make it.
If you don’t vote, your voice doesn’t get heard, period.
One misconception people have on voting is that their vote doesn’t really count. I mean after all, they are just one person. Well, so was everybody else who put Bill Clinton in to office and everyone who put George W. Bush in to office as well.
The point is that as individuals we make a difference, and as a whole we make change. If you were the only person in America to vote for John Kerry in 2004, he obviously wouldn’t have made it in to office. But you would have made a statement and a point about what it is that you believe. However, if everyone who supported him and agreed with his ideas voted while the people who supported Bush decided to sleep in that day, then the outcome would have been different.
Granted, elections aren’t usually won or lost by just one vote. However, if everyone who decided they weren’t important or knowledgeable enough to vote would do it anyway, a lot more people would be happier with the way things are run because they would have put in their “two cents.”
The 2006 General Elections are approaching us at a swift speed. The deadline for registration is Oct. 10, and early voting begins Oct. 24. If you need to register, there are a couple of places you can go. Aside from the many booths scattered around the city that attempt to persuade people to vote, you can also go to the Dallas County Elections (DCE) home page (http://www.dalcoelections.org/) and click on the link to order a registration form.
Don’t know where to go to vote? You can find that on the DCE home page as well. On the DCE, you can find where to go for early voting, Election Day voting, you can register to vote. You can find out if you are already registered, just in case you don’t remember.
The reality is that a lot of people who don’t vote will probably forge some kind of an excuse as to why they don’t – or won’t – but the truth is that there is no excuse not to. With the world at your fingertips and the sky as your limit, voting is a piece of cake.
