Voting is my proud right to choose our leaders. I get to decide who decides for me. Money decisions about changes in my country. Having the opportunity to voice my concerns. Having the chance to reeducate my decisions on choices.

Leaders who seem to have similar values. Vote to keep people out. Choice.

Voting honors the ancestors who fought and died for the right. My voice must be heard. Candidates/leaders should be elected, not appointed leadership and titles. Impacting laws, policy, and civility.

Using our voice as our power to choose our leaders. Sharing in the choosing of appropriate people to lead. Having the opportunity to voice your concerns in choice of leadership. Having the opportunity to reevaluate who should be our leaders.

We matter. Our opinions matter where we need to have our voices heard. The right to vote is our civil right, the bedrock of our democracy. Having the right to choose our leader who is fair and transparent to shape the laws of our country we also need leaders whose morals and values align with ours. Voting allows change to take place. Candidates who refuse to come to debates DO WE VOTE THEM – NO.

Voting gives a citizen a sense of responsibility and allows them to choose future leaders who they think will make the country better. Voting is important because at the end of the day, the leaders who govern society are governing society for the people and their respective needs.

Voting is important because each voice matters, in order to work towards a better community, there must be a good and just leader in front.

The main challenge facing democracy is the lack of civic engagement on the part of the young. To put it bluntly, we are increasingly living in a gerontocracy. Democracy only works when there are enough stakeholders in a democratic society and an understanding that when too many people fall to the bottom–or don’t participate–it drags the middle AND the top down with it. Why is this happening? Because our current leadership is limited by their ideas on both sides of the aisle, and ideas have a very short shelf-life in a world where the only true universal is that the world is entirely subject to change. In other words, nothing is permanent. Leadership must be young, dynamic, courageous, innovative, and flexible because the world changes around us very quickly. Most of our leadership couldn’t explain what variables are with respect to coding, how sophisticated the digital world is, or how to approach our 21st-century information-based economy. I’m not entirely certain I see a vision for progress. It’s time for the young to take the country by storm. That’s why–out of my sense of civic duty–I’ve decided to run for my local Board of Ed. election.

There are a number of challenges facing democracy but chief among them is the increasing disconnect between leaders and the people they serve, creating a crisis of confidence in the system. Some of it is because they’re literally disconnected from everyday American’s issues, some of it is a willing ignorance, but much of it is systemic and the vast majority of it is due to one party’s embrace of a “we can only win if we rig the game” mentality.

State legislatures making it harder to vote, gerrymandering districts, strict punishments that deter voters, and policies and laws that allow the people who were elected to decide who wins, or at least put their thumb on the scales for who wins, in the next election regardless of who voters actually want, these all make it harder for democracy to do what it is supposed to do: keep the powerful in check and ensure they work for the betterment of all Americans, not just the select few they like. The courts are stacked and underfilled, the senate is paralyzed by arcane laws that allow senators to never have to take stands on issues or do anything substantive, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to actually use the ballot box to tell officials we do or don’t like their policy choices and to remove people who abuse their power or worse. It’s only going to get worse and that scares me. We shouldn’t have a system that scares people.