Your Vote Matters

To all adult Americans, I have some pretty significant stats to share to start your Friday morning — in the 2016 presidential election, 100 million Americans, whether registered or not, skipped out on voting in the election. Now President Trump won by 77,000 votes, when focusing on swing states that could have gone the other way and decided the election. Still think your vote as an individual doesn’t matter? I can assure you that couldn’t be further from the truth.

If you live in one of the following swing states, your vote especially matters — Wiscosnin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida (to name a few but there are a few others). Let’s take a look at how close these races were in 2016: in Wisconsin, Trump won by 23,000 votes; in Michigan, Trump won by 11,000 votes; in Ohio, he won by ~450,000 votes (but Ohio is typically a swing state); in Pennslyvania, the margin was 44,000 votes; in North Carolina, ~170,000 votes; in Florida, it was ~100,000 votes. These results occurred with less than half of all possible voters casting their ballots.

I hope that Americans will take their duty to vote very seriously this election year, after all the goal of a democracy is to elect officials that the majority of citizens want— not officials that get into office because most people don’t care. If this post convinces even 1 person to go vote, then I consider it a job well done. So please express your views in casting a vote on your federal, state, and local ballots, and remember to use proper protocols and avoid those fake ballot drop boxes that keep popping in several states!