a PSA for the week before the election

If something you're reading makes you feel more powerless or hopeless, stop reading it.

There's a lot of people out there trying to make you feel like your vote won't matter and they do it by stoking those feelings. Whatever is contributing to you feeling full of dread and doom, stop consuming it. Fill yourself with things that make you feel good, and then go out and vote at your earliest opportunity. Hope is a weapon, hope is a shield, hen we fight we win, yes we can, i got this, etc. etc. etc. Psych yourself up and then go cast your ballot.

On a purely practical level, if you live in an area where one political party dominates overwhelmingly and it's not your party: your vote still counts. Concretely. And here's why:

Elected officials are constantly in danger of losing their jobs, every single election. This is their primal fear - that they'll fail that performance review and get fired. And the more people vote against them - the larger that minority is - the more scared it makes them, because there are always piranhas circling and looking for that district that's no longer "safe."

What does that mean on the ground? Well, a smart politician will shift their stances over to try to win voters back. A less adept one might get more and more rigid in hopes of increasing the turnout of their base, or try to pass laws to make it harder for people to vote. But the key is: they're scared. You scare them.

You, the voter whose preferred candidate definitely isn't going to win? You count. You're the signal of your representative's failure to represent you. And a whole lot of people are listening.