Voting is every Americans given right. We fought hard for it and now we have it for all men and women who meet the basic qualifications. Awesome. However, what I can’t stand leading up to election day the most is being bullied by family, peers and strangers that this is no longer a right but a “civic duty.” Give me a fucking break. If you want to exercise your free will to vote, good for you, but don’t force others to exercise theirs. As someone who has voted in almost every election of the past decade, I am not one of those “your vote doesn’t matter” people. Your vote can matter, but as with anything in life, participation only matters to you if you care about the results.

I recently moved states and now exist in no-man’s land where I could care less about an absentee vote on a state where I don’t live anymore and I know nothing about the local politics of my new state to cast a fair, educated vote. If I have no interest in either candidate or their policies, who does my vote help? Certainly not me since I wouldn’t even know what I was voting for. I’ve been told that’s lazy, but I think it’s better than casting an ignorant vote for “The Democrat” or “The Republican” where all I know is whether or not they make annoying TV commercials. How come I never see any non-partisan, non-biased educational campaign on the election overall being slammed in my face? Obviously, I don’t want to learn about candidate Smith from the Smith camp.

Pressuring the masses just to get out and vote is dumb when you’re not teaching them anything about how their vote affects their lives. You wouldn’t argue to send a bunch of unqualified amateurs to do any other job, so why this? How about instead of guilting people into voting who don’t actually care, we use our energy to teach those who might be interested but just don’t know enough to care.