Young Voters FAQ: Does My Vote Matter?
After all the inaction we’ve seen this year, how can you say elections matter?
Elections do matter.
The bullshit we’ve seen this year proves that much. We’ve been pulling the weight of the Democratic Party for years, fueling their wins and now we must demand change. It’s clear we have the wrong people in office.
Who wins matters. If we don’t win, they will. We are up against fossil fuel money, corporate influence, establishment power, and a real threat of fascism. We need to remember who our true villains are. Our wins weaken the fascists, the corporatists, and the corrupt.
And beyond that, the process of an election itself makes an impact. Campaigns build evergreen community infrastructure. We can build community structures and relationships, train a new cohort of organizers, set the terms of the race, and force everyone to the left. Campaigns create conversation, challenge old beliefs, and make winning the next time more possible.
How can I trust politicians?
Same. We’ve been screwed over so many times. But we aren’t electing politicians, we are electing real people, born and raised just like us, who want to represent and serve their communities. They’ve organized alongside us, fought for us, and earned our trust. It’s not about the individual, it’s about all of us who that person represents.
Isn’t the system rigged?
It is. We all know corruption and money are screwing up our politics. So we REALLY have to win and that’s going to be hard work. But we’ve done it once, we can do it again. Giving up and ceding ground to those who won’t fight for us isn’t an option.
We can use elections to build the power we’ll need to build a new system – our system. The government has money and resources, and we can give them to our local communities and governments. We have to take over, so our government works for us.
I’m just feeling really hopeless.
Yeah, this moment feels bad. We’re in year two of a pandemic, climate legislation is in limbo, we’re suffering through student loan debt, Roe v. Wade is being overturned, climate disasters… It sucks. Let’s give ourselves grace and space to feel the grief, but not let it lead us to despair. We can feel powerful together again.
They want us to feel hopeless. They want us to stop engaging. Because when we stop, when we lose faith that we can achieve revolution, we lose. And whether we like it or not, transforming our country means wrestling power away from those in office
Aren’t enough people engaging in elections? Why do I have to?
We’ve seen that moderates and establishment Dems aren’t taking the crises we face seriously. They don’t see the threat. That’s why young people must get involved. While the Democratic establishment randomly injects organizers into communities every two years, we’re building long-term, hyper-local infrastructure – to change hearts and minds and to use people power everywhere to make lasting change.
Young people can’t accept a world where we lose our reproductive freedom, where climate disasters take more lives each year – where it drowns us or consumes us in flames, where families make choices between going to the hospital or putting food on the table. That’s not who our generation is. We can’t stop fighting.
What should I do to help?
We have a ton of awesome candidates we’re supporting this cycle. People like us, who know struggle and aren’t taking dirty money like their opponents.
Read more about our candidates here, and join a phone bank.
