theunitofcaring:

When news outlets interview people who are not going to vote, they usually talk to people with some kind of ideological reason. But as far as I can tell, most people who don’t vote don’t fail to vote because they have a principle against it. Most of them fail to vote because they’re stressed and inexperienced at navigating bureaucracies and they don’t feel informed and they don’t feel deserving and they don’t have any time.

None of those are problems that you solve by telling people to vote but more angrily than you told them last time. 

If you’re a U.S. citizen, you deserve to vote. Democracies don’t actually rely on citizens to be perfectly informed. “Everyone votes, and if you think things are on the right track they vote for the party in power and if they think things are on the wrong track they vote for the party out of power and if they want a divided government they vote for a divided government” is enough to make our system work. But indifference isn’t enough to make our system work. 

You can look up your polling place here. If you don’t have a good way to get there, check if Uber or Lyft is offering free rides to the polls in your area.

One of the powerful things democracy can do is aggregate everyone’s gut. You probably have a gut feeling about whether the last two years have made this a society you are more proud of, or a society you are less proud of. Even if the only thing you feel competent to evaluate is that, you are competent to evaluate that, and that matters. 

A lot of things are awful right now. But they’ve been worse. We clawed our way here from there, and we’ll keep working on it. 

If you don’t see how you’ll be logistically able to vote, feel free to message me, I can try to break it down into smaller problems and look things up for you.