The Importance Of Voting In The United States

People like to participate in politics in many different ways. Most prefer to vote while others may go one step farther by volunteering for a political campaign or by giving money. At the far end, a few will run for office. No matter what way people choose to sound their opinion, they are still participating in politics. This is true, unless people retracts from participating in politics. Asian Americans and college students are often stamped as apathetic to politics. However, there are both procedural and emotional reasons why neither Asian Americans nor college students are able to participate in our political system by voting or running for office.

Like the majority of democratic nations, United States affords the right to vote for any citizen over the age of eighteen. This is of course only for the presidential election, but most elections in the state and in the county levels do open up after the age of eighteen. Voting is indeed what many people think when they hear the word politics. Despite the commonality, only fifty eight percent of the American population tuned up to vote in the most recent 2012 presidential election (McDonald, 2013). And this number falls even more with different ethnic groups in this nation.

For the majority of the political offices in our country, 25 is minimum age to be eligible to run for office (Steinmetz, 2015). This restriction carves out a big chunk of our college students aged from eighteen to twenty four. Furthermore, experience in other public offices is often an eligibility requirement to even submit a name for candidacy. And with students just finishing colleges, experience would not be one thing that they could take out from the big basket of knowledge and understanding they have gathered while in school. Besides, America’s strict philosophy on experience as the salient quality of a candidate, ensures that no college student gets even close to running for