Everyone. Please vote this November. Recently, I had a pretty sad experience. I saw an statistics article about who students plan to vote for. It was really interesting, but I was very disturbed by the fact that a very large amount of people are not planning on voting at all.

Vote even in a depressing election

In many ways this makes sense: this is one of those depressing elections where no one is happy about the candidates. I have not spoken to a single person at Biola who is legitimately happy with these two candidates. It is “Crooked Hillary” versus “Racist Trump” versus Gary “Aleppo” Johnson versus Jill Stein. Choosing who to vote for was very hard for me. However, I would strongly encourage everyone to go out and vote. There are several reasons why.

First, you get a chance to vote third party. I know people immediately begin murmuring, “But that’s throwing your vote away!” To which my response is: unless you are living in one of the few swing states in America, you are always throwing your vote away because there are millions of voters who basically say your vote does not matter. This is caused by the electoral college along with the nature of such a large democracy. That being said, if enough people, even a small minority of those in state, vote third party, we come one step closer to being a political system where every voice is heard. When enough people vote for a third party, they get a chance to be on all ballots the next election.

Abundant choices

Second, when analysts see that few people vote, they rarely think, “These people who aren’t voting are conscious objectors.” They actually think, “These people probably don’t really care about our election.” If you do not care about the election, you should — albeit not too much as there are few things worse than an overly politically zealous Christian. So if you are a conservative who thinks Donald Trump is a lying fool, vote for the Constitution Party. If you are a liberal who thinks Hillary Clinton is a lying crook, vote for the Green Party. If you “transcend” conservative and liberal, vote for the Libertarian Party. There are so many political parties to choose from. You just have to vote.

If you are a conscious objector, object by voting, not by staying at home. Besides — you are missing out on the most important part of voting when you do not vote because of the presidential election. Local elections and specific propositions are sometimes the most fun to vote for, and they definitely affect us more-so than the Congress. This year some incredible propositions are up for vote in California, including the legalization of cannabis and the end of the death penalty. Do you want your voice to be heard? Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s: in a democracy that is first and foremost your vote.