Vote or cry!

Voting is like eating. If you don’t do it, you can’t complain about the consequences. This is especially true in local races and primaries, where the difference between winning and losing can be a handful of votes. Ideally, you should vote in every election, but if you choose to only vote in national elections, you’ve got it twisted.

Beyond being political nutrition, voting is a business, in that it needs competition to work. I don’t care if you’re conservative or progressive, there’s a reason you should care. Conservative youth, think of an election as a free marketplace for your votes. This is a chance for you to live up to your free market ideals. As for the progressives, this is a chance to lessen the corporate influence people love to gripe about. If you’re not voting against someone for being under a lobbyist’s thumb, who is the politician going to listen to – you or the person giving him/her money?

Tying the two together are the Kansas school boards and Rick Santorum. Santorum started out in school board, and stepped up from there in a bunch of unopposed races. We all know how it went from there, with Santorum slamming gays and “permissive liberal culture,” not to mention his voting record in the Senate. In Kansas, they ran the same hustle and played the voters the same way. Local races are a chance to weed out incompetent idiots and to promote progressives, all with a quick trip to your local polling place or sticking an absentee ballot in the mail.

How you vote doesn’t matter (as long as it’s legal!), just vote. You’re keeping stupid people away from power, making elected officials more likely to care about your interests, even they’re not who you wanted and you have a real chance to shake up local government.

So, while Diddy’s marketing and messaging may be off, you can change one word and it becomes true enough. It’s not “vote or die,” but instead, “vote or cry.” So, unless you want to spend the four months crying, get out and VOTE tomorrow, May 15th!

And before you head out to the polls, check out our Youth Slate. They're the people trying to make things better for you, so show them some love in the booth!