OPINION: The midterm election is your last chance, so don’t blow it
7 reasons why you've got to vote before polls close tomorrow.
Writer Dustin Siebert tries to give you every reason why you've got to vote tomorrow before the polls close because the ramifications could be astronomical if you don't.
You may have heard that there’s a little midterm election happening this Tuesday Nov. 6. You may have also heard a lot of hyperbole associated with it, like this is the most important election of your lifetime and if you don’t vote, the planet will become shrouded in darkness, humanity as you know it will reach the precipice of extinction and you’ll wake up Wednesday with inexplicable athlete’s foot between every toe.
While I don’t remember any midterm election before the mid-1990s, this certainly does feel like the most important considering the shit-show we’ve endured under President Nazi Drew for the last 22 months. I’ve certainly never seen such a concentrated effort via social media and television commercials to get voters to the polls; indeed, experts are predicting that several midterm election records might be set this week.
Unfortunately, there are a great many people who still intend to stay home on Tuesday. If you are of legal voting age, have taken stock of the state of affairs in our country and still need to be convinced why you should hit the polls, well…in the words of ol’ girl from Menace II Society: I feel sorry for your mother.
Look, I’m here to try to give you every reason why you’ve got to vote tomorrow if you haven’t already done so. Just consider the list below to not only be my civic contribution, but my gift to you all.
Congressional flip
The main reason to vote, of course, is to get the Democrats back in charge of Congress: as long as the GOP controls both Congress and the White House, legislation will continue to be a mess and typically not in favor of anyone poor or in possession of melanin, ovaries or an “alternative” sexuality. Regardless of what Republicans in the House and Senate have to say about Donald Trump to their spouses behind closed doors, they’ll publicly keep their noses so far up his bigly behind that they have to wash off the spray tan in order to continue pushing his agenda. The midterm election is literally the most important way to weaken Trump and his plans for America in what we can only pray are just two more years.
Incentives to vote do exist
Sadly, we still live in a country where it’s not only difficult for many people to vote and not lose work wages, but where Black folks are still disenfranchised via the machinations of people who would be thrilled to see us back in shackles “where we belong.” Fortunately, a number of states allow paid time off to vote.
Uber and Lyft are offering reduced-fare rides to polls in certain markets. Good to know some entities actually give a damn about arguably the single most important thing an American can do.
Distance yourself from Millennials
According to a recent NBC poll, it would appear that Millennials aren’t really planning to show up to the polls. Look, we all know that anyone born between 1983 and 1996 is castigated as generally unreliable, avocado toast-loving, debt-carrying scourge on society while Baby Boomers remain the saintly, more responsible, wealth-carrying demographic with their ability to buy a home and support a family off a high school diploma. Change the stereotype and be that millennial that’s going to take a stand and vote in this election.
Don’t listen to the hoteps
The same folks telling you that it’s not in your best interest to vote because this society isn’t “for you” are the ones who say “overstand” and believe that their Black queen’s place is in the kitchen. Be angry, Black and woke, but not to the detriment of fulfilling your civic duty, and not because some idiot who worships “Dr.” Umar Johnson told you to not to vote. Which leads me to…
You see what not-voting did in 2016, right?
Fewer things infuriated me more in 2016 than watching a CNN graphic of my beloved home state of Michigan splashed with red on election night. The same Black folks who were energized by Barack Obama to hit the polls eight years earlier chilled at the crib for Hillary Clinton, paving the way for Trump to win a state Republicans don’t normally win. Hopefully the interminable onslaught of your current President’s rhetoric will galvanize those same people who sat on their thumbs a couple years ago.
There will never be a “perfect” candidate
It’s like expecting the perfect partner, child or bag of clementine oranges: it simply does not exist, and you’ll be miserable forever waiting for one. In many cases (see: the 2016 presidential election), you have to STFU and take the lesser of two evils because the perfect candidate is something you will never find. And, trust me, the Holy Grail is not in voting for the utterly useless Green Party. You may as well run your ballot through a shredder, put it in a Ziploc bag and sit them on the mayonnaise shelf of a Black grocery store where no one will ever find them.
Your forebears would be so ashamed
If nothing else, think about all that your ancestors had to go through to attain Black suffrage. The blood that was shed and relentless white supremacy your great-great-great-granddaddy’s people had to endure to have a say in things was not so your happy ass could skip voting because you want to binge watch 90-Day Fiance. They might be able to tolerate your love for white women and the Hennessy Black, but there’ll be loads of spinnin’ in those graves if you don’t get out to vote.
Dustin J. Seibert is a native Detroiter living in Chicago. Miraculously, people have paid him to be aggressively light-skinned via a computer keyboard for nearly two decades. He loves his own mama slightly more than he loves music and exercises every day only so his French fry intake doesn’t catch up to him. Find him at his own site, wafflecolored.com.
