If you couldn’t vote today, don’t blame the ‘System’, blame yourself
*DISCLAIMER* This may seem very Anti-Bernie, but believe me, it’s not. This is more about the voters than Senator Sanders. Also, I am not Pro-Trump as some people may infer from this article. I have decided once again to support 3rd Party Candidate Gary Johnson since I agree with his positions and despise the Two-Party system.
So I haven’t been posting lately. I’ve been sitting and waiting to see how things played out. But today is NY Primary day and, being a New Yorker, I thought I needed to respond to the craziness I’ve been seeing on Social Media today. All throughout the day, people have been complaining about how they could not vote for Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump for one of 2 reasons:
1.) They are an Independent who did not register with either the Democratic or Republican Party.
2.) They are a college student who failed to secure an absentee ballot and send it in by March 25th.
Now I could also not vote today since I am an Independent but I knew that from the beginning. I sent out a few tweets earlier this month urging people to double-check whether or not they would be able to vote. But many people still did not know this information and have begun flooding lines and causing an uproar on Twitter whenever they are denied access. It’s honestly the craziest thing to me. I would have to say that a majority of the people who are being denied the right to vote today are young Sanders’ voters because of one of the two reasons mentioned above. And it really strikes me because these are the people who are trying to start this ‘Political Revolution’ yet they have no clue how the process they are trying to change works. (How can you hate something you don’t even understand?) Yes, it’s confusing and yes, it’s probably corrupt also; but that doesn’t mean you get to do what you want just because you think you’re doing the right thing.
The other thing that sticks is the irony in all of this. For the past two weeks, Donald Trump’s kids have been getting hammered by Sanders’ supporters because they did not register in time to vote for their dad. People have been insulting them for not knowing the process that, as it turns out, they do not know themselves. It’s very easy to land yourself on the short end of the stick when you ridicule someone for something.
The final thing that bothers me is that the people who can’t vote today are trying to blame the system. The only person you can blame for not being able to vote is yourself. You didn’t take the time to learn the process and now you’re paying the price for it. When Hillary wins this thing today and essentially locks up the nomination, it’ll be because of the failure of the youth vote. And of course, Sanders will come out and disavow the process for being unfair but New York has had a closed primary for a while now. In 2000, the New York Times released an article in which they complained about the ‘unfair’ process and pleaded for people to call then Gov. Pataki to change the rules.[1] So people can’t say that this is something that just confused them. Even Bernie Sanders’ campaign team knew about the process and urged people to register through their website and social media profiles.[2] But I guess people were too busy to take 2 seconds to check the voting rules. I did it today to see just how hard it was. All I did was type in ‘NY Absentee Ballot’ in Google and hit the first link. It brought me to the NY State Board of Elections where I found all of the information I needed.[3] It took about 1 minute but I also don’t type very fast.
It’s time to take responsibility for your mistakes. If your guy/gal does not happen to win today, don’t blame a rigged system. We’ve had plenty of time to learn how it works. Taking the time out to learn it is all it takes. That’s why I will always stress researching on your own rather than relying on the media, your candidate or your friends and family to tell you how the voting process in your respective state works.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/03/opinion/new-york-s-closed-primary.html
[2] https://vote.berniesanders.com/ny
[3] http://www.elections.ny.gov/VotingDeadlines.html
Young Politics 2016 