Voting in the EU Elections - Marci

Just a day after the EU elections, the results are starting to trickle in... In some countries, the results are very surprising, in some it was completely predictable. But that's not what I want to talk about here. After all, I am not trying to tell you who is right or wrong here, even though I have pretty strong opinions on that as well. Ask me about that over a beer if you are interested...

The question is more about the fact that people should go an vote in elections. I had to get on a bus, take a 5 hour ride up to Madrid and go to the Hungarian consulate and cast my vote. Before that, I needed to get through some paperwork to even be able to vote in the consulate. Why go through all this trouble? After all, that one vote doesn't change much, right?

Well, one vote by itself indeed is nothing in the big picture, but if everyone had the idea that their vote didn't matter, nobody would turn up. People complain about elected politicians, but do you really have a right to complain if you didn't turn up? I think not. Hell, even turning up and drawing a penis on the ballot as a protest vote is still better than not turning up. I just think that if you didn't bother to turn up, don't complain about things until the next elections.

I really agree with this Jonathan Pie video. Young people are terrible when it comes to voting participation. I can see why my generation is disgruntled with politics and don't care, but this is how things are: you have to go and vote if you want to change something, because more often than not, the people who you don't like are also going to vote, electing people you don't like. Brexit is a great example, young people literally just slept through the whole process.

We've done a bit of work here at Las del Tul to promote EU elections to the Granada youth and I really hope that we've convinced at least a few people to go and cast a vote for whichever party they favor. We've had speakers from pretty much all the major parties in debates and talks, discussing their plans and programs with the local youth.

If you went to vote, go give yourself a pat on the back, well done! If you didn't, well, there is always next time... Except please don't complain for 5 years, until we have the next elections!