Pretty Please Vote

Overall the Hillary Clinton rally was an entertaining and interesting event. I personally felt like the most important message all of the people that spoke (including the people before Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama) was telling people to vote, that their vote matters. They even went so far as to tell the people who have already done early voting to take other people to the voting polls and get them to vote. Therefore, it seemed apparent that they are concerned about the very same phenomena that Andrew Perrin discusses in American Democracy: From Tocqueville to Town Halls to Twitter.

According to Perrin, “Americans have increasingly lost confidence in their government. Voter participation is low, rarely reaching much beyond 50%.” Since that’s the case, and because a lot of negative things have come to light in this election, Hillary Clinton’s fear of losing could be due to people deciding not to vote or take part in this election.

The way that Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama attempted to convince people to go vote that resonated with me the most was when Michelle Obama talked about how many votes Obama won the North Carolina state by, and breaks down what looks like a huge win to how many votes per country area he won by. This number was a lot smaller, and hit a lot closer to home for people from North Carolina. She used the idea of “instrumental voting: deciding whether to vote, and for whom, based on whether the voter believes her vote could make a difference in the election’s outcome.” (Perrin, 50) I noticed that when she broke down the number of votes, people got a shocked look on their face as if they just realized how influential their vote could be, and increasing the belief that their “vote says something important about what the voter truly believes and who she is.” (Perrin, 54)

This late in the election race, it makes sense that they focused on voting and not on policy or persuasion, since it’s very unlikely people will change their minds. However, I think Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama did manage to energize people and convince them to go vote.