In person conversations and online rants both do a good job of demonstrating how passionate people are when it comes to their personal beliefs, moral values and political stances. That passion and involvement can be a good thing, but only when it comes from a good place. People can sometimes become radical about things they don’t fully understand and I find it disturbing that some voters aren’t always able to explain their beliefs beyond ‘I was raised this way’ or (insert biased news outlet here) seduced me.

If I were to give you a short list of current issues that we could mutually agree on the importance of and have you prioritize them in order of importance to you, would your first instinct be to arrange them according to how they would directly affect you? Or would you consider the issues to be facing the country as a whole?

I’ve known feminists who have thrown a woman their vote just because she was a woman and religious people who have voted for people who claimed to be religious solely based on that. It’s frustrating to know that some people never learned, or possibly were never allowed to think for themselves and as a result of that are so closed minded that they don’t put in the effort to look deeper into the issues they plan to vote on.

I like to think that a large majority of us genuinely want to make the country and the world we live in a better place and that we just have vastly different ideas about how to do that. If you agree with this please know that it is never too late to change your mind about something. Attempting to understand those who disagree with us is the first step. In order to initiate positive change we have to stop getting upset at the fact that someone disagrees with us and instead get upset about the inequality, hatred, violence, dishonesty, greed, corruption, and other injustices that people are suffering from every day.

We aren’t always going to have clear cut options to vote for what we feel is best. We might occasionally have to sacrifice a personal moral standard for the greater good and get over the fact that we will never be able to control or indoctrinate everyone to think and be exactly the same, and  thank God for that.

The right to vote is the right not to vote

Shaming non-voters isn’t nice or productive. If someone refuses to vote, that’s fair. Some people choose not to participate in elections because they don’t see any viable candidates running and would rather just not have to choose the lesser of two evils.

With that said, if you can’t resist the urge to judge people you should hold voters who are uninformed to the same standard as those who opt out. It doesn’t make sense to blame people who aren’t helping clean up a mess more than those who contributed to making it. People who don’t vote aren’t helping whatsoever, but those who do should take it seriously and do it to the best of their ability. Because we still have a teeny-tiny bit of power to make some changes happen, it is important to at the very least, try.