Meghan Harmening | Staff Writer

It’s no secret that this election cycle has been a flurry of slander, criticism, and banter. The top two candidates – Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton – have continued to prove their inadequacy for being a leader for this great nation. Despite an AP poll finding 69 percent of voters have unfavorable feelings toward Donald Trump, he continues to win a large portion of delegates at each primary or caucus. In the same poll, AP found 55 percent of voters have negative views of Hillary Clinton.

So why, then, are these two front runners still in first place for their respective parties?

My opinion? Voters don’t understand the power of a single vote.

Those who feel very strongly for a candidate are more likely to participate in the primaries than someone who simply doesn’t harbor strong feelings for any of the top candidates. And when the convention comes and each party chooses their candidate, moderate voters are stuck with whoever the extreme party members have chosen.

It is so often that someone doesn’t vote simply because neither of the top two candidates align with a majority of their values. More often than not the reason I hear is this – “My vote won’t matter anyway.” Oh is that so? In 2012, just over 57 percent of eligible voters actually turned out to cast their vote. That leaves nearly 43% of eligible voters, or 97 million citizens. Even if an extra 10 percent of voters had come out to cast their vote, the past several decades could have had a drastically different result.

Voters also need to realize that there are third party candidates that can often align more directly with their own views. Sure, no one wants to vote for a “loser”, but again, if everyone the mentality that their vote truly did matter, we might actually have moderate presidents who align more directly with the majority of the country. I truly believe this is the reason we flip from Democrat to Republican and back again. The United States of America is not a country of extremes in the majority, so why do our presidential candidates reflect that we are?

As November nears, I ask you all to reconsider if you’ve decided not to vote. Check out the third party candidates and see if one aligns with your own political values. Our country has a long way to go before it has a chance of voting in a third party candidate, but it isn’t impossible. If our generation can grasp the importance of voting, even if not for one of the two main party candidates, the future of the United States will better reflect the views of the entire population.

Graphic by Nic Gibson