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Seeing how it’s an election year, I’m sure everyone has seen and heard lots of different ads/people tell you to register to vote. I think some musical artists are saying “Vote or Die” in an attempt to get more people to register to vote. I wanna say though, that people shouldn’t register to vote. Yes, that’s right, people should NOT register to vote. After saying that, does it mean that I’m going to now die? Well before you start saying that I’m a bad citizen, read on to see what I have to say.

The biggest point of giving people the chance to vote, is so that their “voice is heard.” So that they can play a role in the decision making that goes on in this country. But if you stop to think about it, how many of the decisions are out there that you really know about? I’m sure that you have an opinion one way or another about such topics as taxes, abortion, the war and so on. However, do you know how each candidate stands? Do you know how they stand on all their issues, not just the big issues? Some people will say that it doesn’t matter, that you should just vote for a candidate because they believe one way or another about one of the big issues, but I think that’s just stupid. The country isn’t run on one issue, it’s run on hundreds of different issues, yet only the big ones are mentioned during election time.

Also, why the big push only during Presidential elections? While the Presidency is the most important public position that one can hold in the United States, those running for local positions will more likely have a greater effect on your everyday life than the President. Yet no one really pays attention to who’s running for your town board, or the next superintendent of your children’s school district. The Presidency may be the glamorous job, but the local ones are the ones that people should think about more.

Now why would I say that you shouldn’t even register to vote? It’s due to the fact that people go out and round up as many people as they can to vote. Especially on college campuses where people are the most apathetic about politics, you’ll have your college democrats/republicans, or any other assortment of clubs/groups getting people to register to vote. But registering someone to vote is useless if that person only gets in line during elections and just picks a name who they think they have more in common with. It’s just like giving a teenager a license without ever having them go through a drivers test to make sure that they know how to really drive. It’s just dumb.

I say it’s better to not have people who don’t know anything vote than to have people who know nothing about what’s going on going out there to vote. A recent poll was taken on whether people really knew what each candidate believed in, and a majority of those who took the poll knew very little about what each candidate advocated.

Some of you might say, well it’s better to get people signed up to vote which can lead them to trying to learn about each candidate. I say that really isn’t true. I myself while registered to vote, haven’t really been following all that much about any candidate other than what the headlines say in the paper. I also seriously doubt the majority of those out there take the time to study up on the candidates. Espcially with all the propoganda through commercials and ads, people will have even less of an idea of what each candidate believes.

Instead, people need to not go out and tell people to register to vote, they should instead educate people on what each candidate believes. They should teach possible voters what the important issues are, what each candidate plans on doing if elected, and how they plan on helping Americans. They need to be given this information without any favorites taken towards the candidates. This is how people should go about doing things. Don’t go out with registration cards and pens, go out and teach the people. Then it should be up to the person to figure out who to vote for. Just having people “Register to vote” is useless and dangerous. You should make sure that your vote isn’t wasted because someone else who decided to randomly pick a candidate picked the opposite one.

Teach the teenager how to drive before giving them a license. Teach the voter before letting them go and vote.