The importance of voting

Political participation is one of our most valuable human rights, but it is one that 7.5 million people in the UK are not utilising as they're not registered to vote in the upcoming EU referendum. We are socialised with this belief that one vote never made a difference, but if all of the people who believed that (like the 34% of registered voters in 2015 who didn't vote and that's not even including the people who didn't register), it could and would swing the vote.

I completely understand why political apathy is at an all time high, especially amongst the youth. The political discourse that's often presented to us is overcomplicated and saturated with buzzwords, it confuses people and I wholeheartedly believe this is deliberate, it is done in the hope that the generally more open-minded, empathic youth don't get invested in politics and so we develop a cognitive dissonance so we feel disconnected from the issues that are being discussed. This tactic is used specifically to maintain the conservative status quo - we all joke about it being old, white men in government but the situation is as it stands because they are trying to keep the youth from getting interested. Youths tend to care about people, and this directly conflicts with conservative ideology. Long story short, it's dangerous for Tories to standardise political education in schools because if the youths became engaged in politics and all voted, the right would crumble.

For true, representative democracy (I'm not arguing that First Past the Post is representative, but I digress) 100% political participation is ideal. If you don't feel like any of the options available to you represent your political beliefs, you can spoil your ballot which is in itself a political statement but do not under any means just abstain from voting. As Owen Jones often says "we are standing on the shoulders of giants" - from the Chartists, to the Suffragettes, people have been fighting for our vote, fighting for democracy, for centuries. If you don't vote, you are actively dismissing and discrediting everything these people fought for. We cannot allow ourselves to be marginalised, our voice matters and political participation is a right we should protect at all costs.

The deadline for registering to vote in the EU Referendum is the 7th June - you can register here, it only takes about 2 minutes at most and the outcome of this referendum will affect youths most.