Election Day is still over a year away, but another arguably more important election is much closer.
While the candidates we’ve seen in debates up to now have an end goal involving The Oval Office, their first major challenge will be the primary elections. Starting in February and ending in June, citizens will have the chance to vote for a candidate to represent their party. But many people will not vote in the primaries.
During the 2012 election cycle, Texans exhibited this perfectly. Of the 18,279,737 people who were registered to vote, only a combined total of 2,039,641 people turned out — just over 15 percent. Those numbers are even worse when you consider only about 71 percent of the voting age population was registered to vote in the first place.
Just in case those numbers don’t speak for themselves, let me expand on why this is such a problem.
Beyond the typical “it’s your civic duty to vote” argument, primaries establish who the people we vote for in November will be. This is the election for the election. If there was a candidate who really spoke to you during the debates, or one you really want to see in the running for president, it’s important that you express that interest during the primaries. If you don’t, it may be the case that you won’t have the opportunity to vote for them come November because you didn’t during March.
This election affects the “big one” in November in other ways, as well. A lot of people don’t vote because they claim they don’t like either candidate. I would understand that argument, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s statistically unlikely they voted in the primary election. It seems like common sense that people shouldn’t complain about something they did nothing to change.
Many people also feel that it’s useless to vote in the Texas primaries because the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries establish momentum for the candidates who win those primaries due to their earlier scheduling. But this is a cop out. Just because a candidate does well in one state, it doesn’t mean they’ll do well in every state. The only way for the most accurate representative of the country’s wishes to be endorsed by their party is for a larger portion of people to vote in the primaries.
If you’re okay with leaving the narrowing down process to the rest of the country, that’s fine. But keep in mind the many steps necessary before the citizenry places someone in the Oval Office. Make sure your voice is heard come election time, but also remember that the November election is not the only one that matters.
Sam King is a  communnication sophomore and news editor for The Battalion.