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Vote

 

            
             After the September 11 attacks on our nation we have had an abundance of national pride. We hang our flags, proudly sing our anthem, and we all go out and register to vote; right? No we don't, which is shameful since voting is the most American thing you could possibly do. Countries such as Cuba, Iraq, and Afghanistan are denied this right we so casually discard. Voting has a long history in our country, and should not be taken lightly. People like Bob Moses and Martin Luther King fought for the rights of African Americans to vote freely without discrimination. Bob Moses was attacked and beaten for his efforts to vote. Women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Motts Began the fight for women's rights to vote in 1848 and continued to do so for more than 70 years. These Americans fought an arduous and in most cases dangerous battle, all for the right to vote, and now their efforts are wasted on an apathetic nation.
             In the last two presidential elections less than half of register voters made their way out to the ballot box. Since 1960 there has been a drop in voting with the 1996 elections reaching an all time low. In the 2000 Presidential Election, of the 207 million citizens of voting age, only 105 million voted, leaving 102 million people to give our founding fathers a big slap in the face. The18-24 age group has one of the lowest turn outs for elections. In the 2000 Presidential election there were 23,915 eligible citizens in this age group, only 12,122 are registered voters, and only 8,635 voted. That's a pretty poor showing considering 30 years ago people under the age of 21 weren't given the right to vote. .
             I"m sure that these 15,280 people who didn't register and or didn't vote thought they had really good excuses for not voting. Some of these are; "I don't like my party's candidates", "I don't like any of the candidates", I don't have time, and my favorite "my vote doesn't count".


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