10 Absolutely Valid Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Exercise The Power Of Your Vote

If you are a first-time voter (or will become one soon), you may still remember those school lessons about how important voting was to the health of a democracy. Your teacher may have even said stuff like ‘practice your franchise’ when you become ‘eligible to vote’. But if all of that sounded like just plain fancy talk to you, you’re not the only one.

The truth is, though, that when it comes to going out there to vote, a huge fraction of our population doesn’t seem interested in exercising this power. Did you know, for example, that voter turnout in Lok Sabha elections has hovered around 55-66% since Independence? But let’s talk about what’s going on with youth like you and me. Until 2014, the turnout of first-time-voters (18-22 years) in the General Elections remained lower than the national average voter turnout. It seems everyone has an excuse to NOT vote! Several excuses, actually.

Team YKA decided to run those bahanas under our scanners and see whether you – the millennial voter – have a legit reason to steer clear of that polling booth. As solid as you think your excuses are, we’ve got a counter for each one of ’em, and by the end of this we think you just might be ready to #JetSetVote!

Choose an excuse for not voting.

What am I, a tree? I moved away from my constituency

You only need to inform the election commission about this. Fill Form 7 to delete your name from the previous constituency and Form 6 (with the new address) to add your name in the electoral roll in the new constituency. Submit both these forms to the Electoral Registration Officer of the new constituency and you are done.

Even migrant workers, who move a lot and get the short end of the stick with almost every government, exercise their right to vote seriously. And you still want to make this excuse?

Yaar, my polling booth is too far!

This is a really bad excuse for not going out to vote. ECI guidelines require that polling stations are set up in a manner that no voter has to travel more than 2 kilometres to vote, so no polling station can be too far away. This guideline is relaxed at times due to topography, but if the election commission has set up a booth in the Gir forest for a single voter, it can be safely said they take a lot of pain to ensure that a voter doesn’t have to cross mountains to cast his vote! Don’t be lazy please?

Ain't nobody got time for those looooong queues!

Okay, so sometimes the weather may not be as pleasant as you’d like it to be. And you may have to stand in a queue to cast your vote. But the wait isn’t infinite, you know. In fact, the ECI reviews and rationalises polling stations from time-to-time so that there are no more than 1200 voters at a station in rural areas and no more than 1400 voters at those in urban areas. Taking this fact into account, how long do you think the wait can be? Not much, we say.

Some jerk stole my wallet and I lost my voter card

Don’t sweat it! You can vote even without your Voter ID. Any commonly accepted proofs of identification including PAN card, driving license, ration card, student’s ID card and passport are accepted as long as your name is on the electoral roll.

Filling those forms = way too much running around!

Says who? You can fill Form 6 for registration online at www.eci.nic.in or on each respective state’s Chief Electoral Officer’s (CEO) website. And if you don’t have access to internet, you can send the form to the Electoral Registration Officer by post!

I'm leaving on a jet plane; gonna study/work/live in 'the foreign' ✈

All the best in foreign land! But just FYI, as long as you are a citizen of India, you can register for voting. Click here to know more. You might have to come down to India, though unless you are a service voter. Click here to know more about service voters.

All this new-fangled equipment (EVM) looks way too complicated

Watch the video and you are ready!

Elections are for powerful people. Not really important for aam janta like me

This is Shyam Saran Negi. He is going to be 100 years old. He still votes. Be like him. Moreover, from your representatives at the local level to those at the national level, everybody has a role to play in how your money is spent (watch video below), and each of these people affect how you live. If you don’t choose your representative, you’ll be foregoing the power to decide how you are governed.

What good is my residence proof when I live in a hostel now?

Here’s a Eureka! moment for you. You can still register as a voter if you want to vote as a resident of your college hostel. If your college is in a place different from your hometown, you would want that place to be governed well, too, right? So if you plan to vote as a resident of your college, you need to get a Student Declaration Form signed by your college authorities, and you are ready with a residence proof.

I don't even know the names of the candidates!

For general and assembly elections at least, the ECI uploads affidavits (containing information about candidates, such as their educational qualification, criminal history records, details of assets and liabilities) of each candidate in a constituency on its website. State Election Commissions, although promise this, haven’t always done so readily for local body elections. But other organisations, such as Association for Democratic Reforms, provide this information on their website for local body elections too. There. Done.

My vote probably doesn't matter much

Every single vote matters! Don’t believe us? Ask A. R. Krishnamurhthy of Janata Dal (Secular) who lost to R Dhruvanarayan of Congress by just one vote in the Karnataka assembly elections of 2004. Here are four more instances from India where just one vote made all the difference.

Got an excuse that’s not in the list? Post your excuse in the comments, and we’ll see if we can help you with it. Happy voting for the next elections!

The post 10 Absolutely Valid Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Exercise The Power Of Your Vote appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz, an award-winning online platform that serves as the hub of thoughtful opinions and reportage on the world's most pressing issues, as witnessed by the current generation. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to find out more.