Being so close to Election Day, there are still many people undecided on who they are going to vote for or if they are going to vote at all.
The younger generation, many of whom are eligible to vote for the first time is this election, feel uninformed which is one of the reasons they may not vote at all. They say this is due to a seemingly blatant disregard for discussing policy. They wanted to know where the future president stands on the issues that will affect their futures, but they got almost nothing from the candidates.
This is because the mainstream media has focused their coverage on things Trump has said such as building a wall, his ideas on immigration and Muslims, his tax returns and the fact that overall he is just not a good person; as demonstrated by the release of “The Trump Tapes.”
The other side of this is the continual focus on the Benghazi investigations, Clinton’s emails and her private server and her close association with Wall Street. This campaign has been all about he said/she said, that discussing actual policy had been pushed away. How our next president is going to solve our country’s problems is apparently not as important as the television ratings their various scandals brings in.
Another reason many say they are not going to vote is because of Republican nominee Donald Trump and his insistence that the election will be rigged, many say they believe this after the leaked emails that say the Democratic Party rigged the primaries against Bernie Sanders, who during the primaries was the popular choice among college aged voters.
While this election cycle has been widely covered on social media, usually in a bad way such as Trump’s late night Twitter rants and overall childish behavior, or the trending of Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks against Clinton. Despite this, USA Today has attempted to use social media for good in the coming election. In late September they launched “Voting Because, a new initiative aimed at shining a brighter light on the importance of voting in the upcoming election.” This includes launching the website VotingBecause.com which offers a variety of resources to arm users for this year’s election, such as easy access to Rock The Vote; which is a voter registration tool and the largest nonprofit and nonpartisan organization in the United States driving the youth vote to the polls.
This also included starting the hashtag #votingbecause in which many celebrities such as Kendall Jenner, Jimmy Kimmel, NBA player John Wall, current Miss USA DeShauna Barber and many other taking to Twitter holding up signs that at the top have #votingbecause and listing their reasons which include: it is my right, it is my duty, my vote counts and my vote matters, among many others.
Social media has as many ups as it has downs, however the fact that it is being used in this way is a very good thing. Many celebrities often use their notoriety in order to draw attention to various issues whether it is political or otherwise. The fact that the celebrities are simply stating why they are voting and keeping their personal choice out of it make it a much more positive thing. We will have to wait until the results are in, however hopefully this use of social media will have helped those whom #votingbecause was directed to not only vote; but also the ability to make an informed decision come Nov. 8.
