Not Voting is the Real Crime
While waiting for Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, I sat with thousands of my closest friends in the LJVM Coliseum. As congress members and candidates came up to speak, I mostly people watched in efforts to make sense of what was going on. Going into the event, I was not sure what to expect given that I had never been to a rally nor have I ever known anyone who has gone to one. Due to the power of multitasking, I did catch some of what the speakers were saying, and for the most part, everyone, including Michelle Obama and Hillary Obama, said the same thing.
Voting. Between everyone who spoke, they all addressed and centered their speeches on VOTING. Whenever discussing any issues or beliefs, they all tied it back into voting; for example, after talking about the treatment of women, Hillary Clinton said, “dignity and respect for women and girls is on the ballot in this election.” In a way, it makes sense to use this time to persuade the swing voters; especially in this election where it seems people are not weighing partisanship to as important as it has been. Besides for students, from the looks of it, there was a high turnout of African Americans, who are electorally captured by the democrats. A study that was noted in Uneasy Alliances found that “the greater number or blacks in a precinct, the lower the number of persuadable voters,” (Frymer, 130). But it doesn’t make sense to persuade the already persuaded, so why all the voting talk? Granted, the African American population was not the majority in that room, but even college students generally lean to be more liberal.
In this election specifically, there are many people saying they do not want to vote based on the fact “there is no good reason to spend the time, energy, attention, and resources to cast a vote,”(Perin, 53). It seems the voting talk was mainly in place to encourage the act of voting by emphasizing every important thing you care about is on the ballot. It wasn’t focused on who to vote for, but on the act of voting. At first, this did not make any sense to me and I left with slight anger because I was expecting the talk to be more issues based, but once looking up a definition to political rallies, it all made sense.
