Our view – Register to vote

College students are harked on every election year to get out and vote, and, to our credit, we have heeded the call, voting in record numbers for our age group in the past few elections. We must continue the trend, even if we have to hold our noses.

There is some validity to claims that voting doesn’t matter because our votes don’t count, the policy of candidates don’t align with our preferences, and radical change will not happen through any election.

Your individual vote for Joe Biden, Donald Trump, or others won’t mean much because Kansas is a solidly Republican state electorally. However, your vote for state and federal legislators could determine the future of both body politics for a generation. In just this year, several hyper-local elections were determined within a couple of dozen votes.

The bits of progress we can achieve through voting for compromise candidates instead of allowing worse candidates to win makes voting worthwhile.

We are a large voting block that has the power to make meaningful change, even if it is not exactly what we wanted.

We are the most politically-engaged generation, we know what’s going on in the world and how it’s screwing us over, we know the history of student activism and the power it has, we’ve gone into the streets to speak against injustice, and now we can do the same boring thing we’ve done every year – vote.

In the time it took you to read this editorial, you could have registered to vote and requested a mail-in ballot at KSVotes.org. So, don’t let us take up any more of your time.

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