how to start an essay about voting

Voting Awareness Essay

The voting awareness essay is an article that discusses voting and its importance. It provides information about voting and how to be a responsible voter. A lot of people want to vote, but many are not aware of its need and how to cast it. This is where voting awareness comes into play. The idea of voting awareness is to help people understand the importance of voting. Voting is an important way for voters to control their government. It is a method for citizens to express what they want from their leaders by raising awareness about voting. This will lead to better governance and what everyone wants – a democracy that is free, fair and representative.

Voting helps citizens become more involved in their government and keep it accountable. To vote, you must meet specific requirements. In addition to voting, there are a few laws that ensure fair elections around the world. BYJU’S short essay on voting awareness helps us understand the vote’s significance.

Importance of Voting

Voting is an integral part of democracy, and it is necessary for people to have a voice. Everyone has the right to vote, which means that all Indians can vote for the Prime Minister of their choice. By voting, you can create change and make a difference in your community. It is also important to vote because you can only repeal a law if most citizens agree with it.

Voting is one way to be more civically engaged with your government. It is vital to make a difference in the world by having your voice heard and representing the views of people who don’t have a voice. If you want to create change, voting is an excellent way. Voting in election helps citizens ensure that the country is granted better rights and protection.

Voting is an important civic duty that can significantly impact the future of our country. Voting helps keep politicians accountable for their actions and creates the framework for our democracy. Voting also ensures that public officials are paid with the tax amount from the people who can afford to pay them. The most consequential decision of all is how to spend tax – voting ensures that there is accountability for what goes into our government’s budget. The last thing we want is for politicians to be able to spend public money without being held accountable by the public’s vote.

To conclude, this is BYJU’S voting awareness essay for kids to help them understand the significance of voting in a democracy. Voting gives citizens a voice and an opportunity to participate in the democratic process. Voting also allows everyone to contribute to the shared democracy and make the government more representative of the people. For more kids learning activities like worksheets , poems etc., visit BYJU’S website.

Frequently Asked Questions on Voting Awareness Essay

At what age can a person vote in india.

In India, a person can start voting once they turn 18.

Why should we vote?

We should vote to let our voices be heard and ensure that what we want is put into effect. Voting is one of the fundamental rights our country offers us.

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• School Education /

Essay on Voting for School Students: Samples in 150, 200, and 250 Words

• Updated on  
• Feb 15, 2024

Essay on Voting: Voting is a powerful tool for any democratic country. The act of voting not only helps the candidate to build a nation by making laws and implementing them, but the active participation of voters in the democratic process also ensures active participation in nation-building.

Similarly theme for the year 2024 National Voters Day is ´Nothing Like Voting, I Vote for Sure’ aims to raise awareness about voting, encouraging eligible candidates to register for the nation, building responsibility, and actively participating in the process of democracy.

Table of Contents

• 1 Essay on Voting in 150 Words
• 2 Essay on Voting in 200 words
• 3 Essay on Voting in 250 words:

Also Read: One Nation One Election Essay in 500 Words

Essay on Voting in 150 Words

Voting plays an important role in a democratic country. For the citizens of a democracy, voting is more than a civic duty; in fact, it is a powerful expression of the thoughts and hopes of the general public. 

Through the right to vote, the voting behaviour of a citizen in a country actively participates in shaping the future and influences the policies that are made or are still to be drafted for the welfare of the people. In a voting method, the citizens of a country elect representatives who align with their values. Altogether, voting gives the right to subjects that empower and encourage a sense of responsibility and help in engagement with the community.

Moreover, it should be understood that the impact of each vote resonates beyond the electronic voting machines or ballot boxes. In reality, voting shapes the course of the nation and ensures a government that recognises the alternate visions and aspirations of the general public.

Also Read: Features of Democracy Notes

Essay on Voting in 200 words

The behaviour of voters plays an important role in running elections and in shaping the country’s democracy. Among the many key determinants of understanding voting behaviour is the voter´s socio-economic background. Every human needs financial assistance to live; therefore, choosing monetary benefits as the priority is not incorrect in any way. To earn, we need employment opportunities, control of inflation, and a boom in economic development. All these three key ingredients make up one of the mindsets of voters towards selecting the type of government they want. The areas experiencing good growth regarding the economy as well as job opportunities may witness the support of the voters for the ruling party in the future, while the areas facing challenges may lean towards failure.

Moreover, caste and community also play an important role in aligning the candidates in the minds of voters. Apart from economic development and casteism, the political agendas and manifestos of political parties also help in shaping the voter’s behaviour. In between all of these, how can we forget the role of the media in building the perception of public opinion?

Voter behaviour in voting is a complex interaction where understanding socio-economic factors, media influence, political ideologies, and leadership qualities not only marks success for the political parties but also for building a strong nation as per voters´ voting desire.

Also Read: Speech on President of India for School Students in English

Essay on Voting in 250 words:

The Indian system of voting follows a parliamentary democracy in which the people elect representatives to a parliament, and they make laws for them. The Indian electoral system in India is designed to ensure the representation and participation of citizens while they choose their representatives. The entire process of voting involves many steps, which begin from the registration of voters to the actual casting of votes.

In the first stage, eligible citizens who are over the age of 18 must register themselves as voters. Then they have to submit their necessary documents, which include proof of identity and address, to the Election Commission of India. Once the candidates are registered with the Election Commission of India, they receive their identification card, also called a voter ID card.

The political parties nominate the candidates, and citizens vote for their favourite candidate. The contender who gets the highest number of votes in the constituency wins and represents the legislative body.

In the whole process of elections in India, the Election Commission makes sure that the voting process is fair and transparent throughout the electoral process. Moreover, it is also made sure that people should be able to use EVM, which is another replacement for traditional paper ballots.

The people of India trust the Constitution as well as the authorities that help them elect their representatives. Furthermore, the Election Commission also runs voter awareness campaigns and proxy voting methods, which contribute to the fairness of elections in India.

Also Read: Notes on Lok Sabha

Ans: In simple words, voting means choosing someone in an election. 

Ans: One can participate in democracy by voting for their favourite candidate.

Ans: The word democracy comes from the Greek words demos, which means people, and kratos, which means rule. In short, we can say that democracy is the power of selection that always lies in the hands of the people.

Ans: Elections are the mechanism by which a registered and valid person of a country can only choose their leader.

Ans: People can participate in democracy by voting for their favourite parties. 

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Deepika Joshi

Deepika Joshi is an experienced content writer with expertise in creating educational and informative content. She has a year of experience writing content for speeches, essays, NCERT, study abroad and EdTech SaaS. Her strengths lie in conducting thorough research and ananlysis to provide accurate and up-to-date information to readers. She enjoys staying updated on new skills and knowledge, particulary in education domain. In her free time, she loves to read articles, and blogs with related to her field to further expand her expertise. In personal life, she loves creative writing and aspire to connect with innovative people who have fresh ideas to offer.

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Essay on Why Is Voting Important

Students are often asked to write an essay on Why Is Voting Important in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Why Is Voting Important

What is voting.

Voting is when people choose who they want to make decisions in the government. It’s like picking a captain for your sports team, but for running the country or your local area.

Why Voting Matters

Voting is important because it lets you have a say in what happens around you. From the parks you play in, to the schools you learn in, voting affects many parts of your life.

Your Voice Counts

Even though you’re one person, your vote can make a big difference. Imagine if everyone thought their vote didn’t count; nothing would ever change. Voting is your chance to stand up for what you believe in.

In short, voting is a key part of having a say in how your community and country are run. It’s a powerful way for everyone, including you in the future, to shape the world they live in.

250 Words Essay on Why Is Voting Important

What makes voting important.

Shapes the Government: Your vote plays a crucial role in determining who leads your community or country. When you vote, you’re choosing the people who make decisions that directly impact your daily life. These decisions can range from education policies to healthcare and infrastructure development. Your vote helps shape the direction of your community or country.

Influences Policies: The decisions made by elected officials significantly impact various aspects of our lives. Whether it’s taxes, education, healthcare, or environmental regulations, your vote has the power to influence these policies. By voting, you’re helping to create a society that aligns with your values and beliefs.

Holds Leaders Accountable: One of the primary purposes of voting is to hold elected officials accountable for their actions. By voting, you’re sending a clear message to those in power that you’re watching their performance and holding them responsible for the decisions they make. This accountability ensures that your elected representatives work in the best interests of the community.

Strengthens Democracy: Voting is a cornerstone of a healthy democracy. It reinforces the principle that the people hold the power to shape their own destiny. When citizens actively participate in the electoral process, it demonstrates the strength and vitality of a democratic system. Your vote contributes to upholding the principles of democracy and ensuring that the government remains responsive to the needs of its citizens.

500 Words Essay on Why Is Voting Important

Why should we vote, our voice matters.

When you vote, you are exercising your right to have a say in how your community is run. You are choosing the people who will make decisions that affect your life, such as the quality of your schools, the safety of your streets, and the taxes you pay. Voting is one of the most important ways that you can make your voice heard and ensure that your concerns are represented in government.

Elections Have Consequences

Voting is a right.

Voting is a right that has been fought for and won by many people throughout history. In some countries, people still do not have the right to vote, so it is important to appreciate the opportunity that we have to participate in our democracy. Voting is a way to honor the sacrifices that others have made to ensure that we have a say in our government.

It’s Your Civic Duty

Voting is a civic duty. It is a responsibility that we have as citizens to participate in the democratic process. When you vote, you are not only exercising your right to have a say in how your community is run, you are also helping to ensure that our democracy remains strong.

The Future of Our Democracy

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Why People should Vote Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

People vote depending on their preferences. Since voting is optional, there are individuals who usually do not vote. They evade voting due to ignorance of the importance of the democratic process. Electors should acquaint themselves with constructive rationales for voting caring leaders.

Firstly, one reason for voting is that every vote is vital. People vote to avoid letting others decide for them who will lead them. They understand that a single vote can determine the winner of an election. There are instances that winners have been settled on by a single vote. In some cases, leaders have been decided by a flip of a coin (Willett). People, therefore, vote to exercise their civil rights and influence the outcome of elections.

Subsequently, people vote to protect their health. A number of electors understand that an elected leader has the power to determine the value of health care insurance they would get (Willett). They want quality healthy care services but do not want to be over taxed. They vote leaders who will provide affordable heath care services. Women also can abort after a few judges rule that it is legally acceptable. Electors who are not pleased with such life threatening decision made by a few individuals would prefer to vote in pro-life leaders(Willett).

Another reason for voting is to protect historical interests. This means people vote to honor those who fought of their voting rights and human freedoms in the community. In the past, adults younger than twenty-one years, members of minority communities, and women did not have the right to vote.

Patriotic citizens sacrificed to fight laws that were holding them captive. People vote in honor of these heroes. The idea behind this reason is if one sacrifices his/her life to fight for others, then people feel the rights are highly essential, and they do not ignore to exercise the rights. They vote to decide who among the historical heroes represented their interests (Willett).

Moreover, people vote to decide the destiny of their children and dependants. They decide the destiny of the future generations. This is because leaders make choices that influence both current and future lifestyles (Hardcastle). The laws enacted in parliament regarding education, investment, and the right to life determines the lifestyle other generations will lead.

Therefore, many people vote to secure a bright future for their children, grandchildren, and the preceding generations. In addition, they vote to lead by example. A parent, older sibling, or friend demonstrates responsibility by voting. When members of the younger generations learn that their older siblings or relatives are voting, they may become lifelong voters(Willett).

In addition, people also vote to lose the right to complain. In spite of the outcome of an election, voting helps electors to gain psychological sense of satisfaction (Hardcastle). After voting, they feel that they have played their roles. They also feel to be part of the future.

This motive makes people discover their political strengths and weakness. They also learn about democracy and its benefits. Without voting, it is not possible to know candidates’ political strengths and weaknesses. People vote to enjoy their patriotic rights and feel recognized.

People also vote to save money. The government collects taxes to manage public projects. Every person pays a fraction of his/her salary or income from investments to the government. Therefore, people vote to elect politicians who they can trust with their money. They vote to get roads, police officers, and doctors, but not to over pay taxes. The manner of management of bond issues and proposition also determine how much property taxes people have to pay.

As another key point, people vote to save the world. There are numerous emerging global problems. Voters understand that electing visionary candidates can save the entire globe. Global warming is one of the global challenges that need redress (Willett).

In addition to voting to have leaders that take care of economic factors and energy requirements, people vote to protect the environment. Lobby groups do a marvelous work in the campaign for the protection of the environment. Nonetheless, they also vote. Lobby groups vote because they are determined to have governments that address environmental issues effectively.

The other reason for voting is the need to defend personal social a gender (Willett). Politicians enact Acts of parliament to restrict and protect social freedoms. Some of the freedoms legislators may put restriction on include prayer in schools, homosexuality, and marriage. Those who have concerns regarding any of the social laws do not vote candidates who cannot defend their rights. They vote candidates who can positively influence the social direction of life in the country.

Conclusively, there are several reasons for voting, but these are the key ones. Some people base their reasons on misconceptions. However, due to modernization, many people have access to information and easily make up their minds positively. People should investigate their true preferences to discover their rationales for voting. This will help them elect leaders with the people’s interests at heart.

Works Cited

Hardcastle, Mike . “Top 5 Reasons Youth Should Vote.” Teen Advice – Advice and Community For Teens . N.p., n.d. Web.

Willett, Brian. “Reasons to Vote in Elections | eHow.com.” Demand Media, Inc., n.d. Web.

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Voting - Essay Samples And Topic Ideas For Free

Voting is a fundamental aspect of democratic systems, enabling citizens to express their political preferences and choose their representatives. Essays on voting could explore the history of voting rights, the mechanics of various voting systems, and the factors influencing voter behavior. Moreover, discussions might cover issues like voter suppression, electoral reforms, and the social and political implications of voting as both a personal and collective act of civic engagement. A vast selection of complimentary essay illustrations pertaining to Voting you can find at PapersOwl Website. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

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How to Start An Essay- Steps with Examples

Once you have a single idea to anchor your essay, build the entire piece around it. Starting an essay can be challenging; it's like revving up the engine and keeping your ideas flowing throughout. But I've got a foolproof plan for you. In this article I will show you how to start an essay and write a powerful, impactful piece for your class.

What is the Process of Writing an Essay?

Just like any task that requires organization, writing an essay follows a structured process. If you want to ensure that your essay is well-organized and not just a free flow of ideas, consider the following process:

Read and Understand the Prompt: Begin by carefully reading the essay prompt to fully grasp what is being asked of you. Break it down into manageable parts to ensure you cover every aspect in your essay.

Plan Your Essay: Take time to brainstorm and organize your ideas. Creating an outline or a web of your ideas and supporting details will make the writing process much smoother. This will help you structure your essay logically and ensure all your points are well thought out.

Use and Cite Sources: Conduct thorough research to gather information and evidence to support your arguments. Use quotes and paraphrases from credible sources, but always avoid plagiarism by properly citing your sources.

Write a Draft: Start by writing a rough draft. As Ernest Hemingway said, “The first draft of anything is always crap.” This stage allows you to get all your ideas down without worrying about perfection. Drafts are essential for organizing your thoughts and refining your arguments.

Develop a Strong Thesis: Your thesis statement is the main argument of your essay and the most important sentence you'll write. Make it clear and compelling, setting the stage for your entire essay.

Respond to the Prompt: Once you've refined your draft, ensure that you are directly addressing every part of the prompt. Your final draft should be a polished version of your ideas, with a clear and logical flow.

Proofread: Review your essay carefully to catch any grammatical errors, typos, or awkward sentences. Proofreading is crucial because even small mistakes can undermine the professionalism and clarity of your essay.

What is the Structure of an Essay?

Although more advanced academic papers have their own unique structures, the basic high school or college essay typically follows a standardized five-paragraph format:

1.Introduction

Writing a well-structured essay is crucial for clearly conveying your ideas and arguments. While advanced academic papers may have complex structures, the basic high school or college essay typically follows a standardized five-paragraph format. This format includes an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion, each serving a specific purpose to guide the reader through your argument.

The introduction paragraph is where you start by grabbing the reader’s attention with an engaging "hook," such as a relevant quote or a surprising fact. Following this, you introduce your thesis statement, which is the central argument or point of your essay. To set the stage for the rest of the essay, you provide a brief preview of the three main points that will be covered in the body paragraphs.

The first body paragraph begins with a topic sentence that introduces the first subtopic related to your thesis. This paragraph includes supporting details or examples that illustrate your point, followed by an explanation of how these details or examples support your thesis. This structured approach ensures clarity and coherence, making your argument more persuasive.

The second body paragraph follows a similar format. It starts with a topic sentence that introduces the second subtopic. Again, you provide supporting details or examples and explain their relevance to your thesis. This repetition of structure helps reinforce your argument and makes it easier for the reader to follow your reasoning.

The third body paragraph introduces the third subtopic with a topic sentence. Just like the previous paragraphs, it includes supporting details or examples and explains how they support your thesis. This consistent format throughout the body paragraphs ensures that each point is clearly presented and thoroughly examined.

3.Conclusion

The conclusion paragraph begins with a concluding transition, such as "in conclusion," signaling that you are wrapping up your essay. You restate your thesis in a new way to reinforce your main argument. Then, you summarize the key points discussed in the body paragraphs, tying them back to your thesis.

Finally, you end with a "global statement" or call to action, leaving the reader with a final thought or suggestion related to your topic. This structured approach to essay writing helps ensure that your arguments are clear, cohesive, and compelling from start to finish.

How to Start an Essay [3 Steps with examples]

Starting an essay can bring a mix of thoughts: how to begin, how to end, what supporting points to use. This confusion often leads students to produce subpar essays. Writing an essay is a process that requires structure, which is why learning how to start an essay is crucial.

From my experience, the first tip is to analyze the question and begin brainstorming. This is followed by a series of steps I'll discuss to help you craft an essay that communicates your message effectively. Let's explore how to start an essay, including examples, samples, and techniques like opening with a thought-provoking question. Whether you're looking for "how to start an essay with examples" or a "how to start an essay sample," these tips will guide you towards a strong introduction that sets the tone for your entire piece.

1.Writing the Introduction

Your introduction sets the tone for your entire essay. It's your opportunity to grab the reader's attention and provide a roadmap for what's to come. Let's break down the key components following up with how to start an essay examples:

The hook is your opening statement that captivates your audience. It should be intriguing, thought-provoking, and relevant to your topic. A strong hook can take various forms, such as a startling statistic, a provocative question, or a vivid anecdote. The key is to pique your reader's curiosity and make them eager to read more.

a) "Imagine a world where your morning coffee could power your entire house for a day. While this might sound like science fiction, recent advancements in bioenergy are bringing us closer to this reality."

b) "In the time it takes you to read this sentence, over 200 species will have gone extinct. The alarming rate of biodiversity loss is not just a statistic—it's a call to action that we can no longer ignore."

Context / Background

After hooking your reader, provide context that helps them understand the significance of your topic. This background information should bridge the gap between your hook and your thesis statement. Explain why your topic matters, touch on recent developments or historical context, and set the stage for your main argument.

"The concept of artificial intelligence (AI) has evolved from the realm of science fiction to a cornerstone of modern technology. Over the past decade, AI has permeated various aspects of our lives, from voice assistants in our homes to complex algorithms driving social media platforms. As AI continues to advance at an unprecedented pace, it raises profound questions about the future of work, privacy, and even what it means to be human. Understanding the implications of this technological revolution is crucial as we navigate an increasingly AI-driven world."

Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement is the cornerstone of your essay. It clearly articulates your main argument or purpose, providing a preview of what you'll discuss in the body of your essay. A strong thesis should be specific, arguable, and concise. It sets expectations for your readers and guides the structure of your essay.

"This essay will examine the ethical implications of AI development, arguing that while artificial intelligence offers tremendous benefits in fields such as healthcare and environmental protection, it also poses significant risks to privacy, job security, and social equality. By analyzing these challenges and proposing a framework for responsible AI development, I aim to demonstrate that proactive ethical considerations are essential to harnessing AI's potential while mitigating its dangers."

Overview Ending (Optional)

To round off your introduction, you might choose to provide a brief overview of your essay's structure. This can help orient your readers and give them a clear idea of what to expect. However, be careful not to give away too much—you want to maintain some element of anticipation.

"In exploring the ethical landscape of AI, we will first delve into its transformative potential across various sectors. Then, we'll critically examine the challenges and risks associated with widespread AI adoption. Finally, we'll propose a set of ethical guidelines and policy recommendations aimed at fostering responsible AI development. Through this analysis, we'll uncover how balancing innovation with ethical considerations is crucial for creating an AI-enhanced future that benefits all of humanity."

Once we have written our overview ending, our introduction paragraph is complete. Here is an example of an introduction paragraph:

This might initially appear daunting due to its size, but leveraging WPS AI can streamline and condense the content effectively. Here's how you can simplify and refine it:

Step 1: Select your entire introduction paragraph, and then click on the "WPS AI" icon in the hover menu.

Step 2: From the list of WPS AI options, click on "Make shorter" to help reduce the length of your content.

Step 3: WPS AI will display a shorter version of your introduction in a small window; click on "Replace".

Step 4: The introduction paragraph will now be replaced with a shorter version for your essay.

2.Writing the Body

The body of your essay is where you develop your arguments and provide evidence to support your thesis. It's the meat of your essay, where you dive deep into your topic and showcase your knowledge and critical thinking skills.

Present and develop the main arguments that support your thesis statement. Each paragraph should focus on a single main idea or argument that contributes to your overall thesis. This structure helps your reader follow your logic and understand your points clearly.

Let's say your thesis is about the impact of renewable energy on climate change mitigation. One argument could be:

"The widespread adoption of solar power technology has significantly reduced carbon emissions in countries that have invested heavily in this renewable energy source."

Support each argument with solid evidence that reinforces your point. Evidence can include facts, statistics, research findings, expert opinions, or examples from real-life situations. The stronger and more varied your evidence, the more convincing your argument will be.

"According to a 2023 report by the International Energy Agency, countries with high solar power adoption have seen an average reduction in carbon emissions of 15% over the past five years. For instance, Germany, a leader in solar energy, has cut its carbon emissions by 28% since 2010, with solar power contributing to more than half of this reduction."

Ideas (Paragraphs)

Organize your ideas into coherent paragraphs. Each paragraph should start with a topic sentence that introduces the main idea of the paragraph. Follow this with your evidence and analysis, explaining how this information supports your argument and relates to your thesis.

Topic sentence: "Beyond reducing carbon emissions, solar power adoption also stimulates economic growth and job creation in the renewable energy sector."

Evidence and analysis: "A study by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that solar panel installer will be the fastest-growing job in the United States over the next decade, with an expected growth rate of 52%. This surge in employment opportunities not only helps to offset job losses in traditional energy sectors but also contributes to overall economic resilience. For example, in California, the solar industry has created over 86,000 jobs, boosting the state's economy while simultaneously reducing its carbon footprint."

This structure is followed for each body paragraph added. So, if you think you have 3 sub-topics, you will have 3 body paragraphs, stating the sub-topic followed by evidence to back your argument.

Transitions

Use transitions to link your paragraphs and ideas together smoothly. These can be words or phrases that show how one idea leads to another or how different viewpoints contrast. Good transitions help your essay flow logically and coherently.

"While solar power demonstrates significant benefits for both the environment and economy, it's essential to consider other renewable energy sources that complement its strengths and address its limitations."

Here is how a body paragraph would look like:

3.Writing the Conclusion

Your conclusion is your final opportunity to leave a lasting impression on your reader. It should tie together all the threads of your essay and reinforce your main points.

Summary / Synthesis

Summarize the main points you have discussed throughout the essay. This reminder helps solidify your arguments in the reader's mind.

"Throughout this essay, we've explored the multifaceted impact of renewable energy, particularly solar power, on our fight against climate change. We've seen how solar technology significantly reduces carbon emissions, stimulates economic growth through job creation, and complements other renewable energy sources. Moreover, we've examined the challenges of energy storage and distribution that come with increased reliance on solar power."

Importance of Your Topic

Explain why your topic is important or relevant. Connect the discussion back to the broader context or implications of your thesis statement.

"The transition to renewable energy sources like solar power is not just an environmental imperative; it's a pivotal moment in human history. As we face the growing threats of climate change, including rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and biodiversity loss, our energy choices today will shape the world for generations to come. The widespread adoption of solar and other renewable energy sources offers a path to a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable future."

Strong Closing Statement

End your conclusion with a strong closing statement that leaves a lasting impression on the reader. This could be a call to action, a prediction, or a thought-provoking question.

"As we stand at this critical juncture, the choice is clear: embrace the power of the sun and other renewable sources, or continue down a path of environmental degradation. By investing in solar technology, supporting policies that encourage renewable energy adoption, and making conscious energy choices in our daily lives, we can harness the immense potential of renewable energy. The future of our planet is bright - if we choose to make it so. Will you be part of this solar revolution?"

The final conclusion, including all the main functions, would look something like this:

Bonus Tips: How to Polish your Essay with WPS AI

The great thing about WPS Office isn't just that it comes equipped with everything a student in any field needs and has all the tools for you to write the perfect essay, but also that WPS AI helps you improve the quality of what you have at hand.

Grammar and Spelling Check:

WPS Office includes advanced grammar and spelling check tools that automatically identify and correct errors. This feature ensures that your writing is free of typos and grammatical mistakes, enhancing the overall readability and professionalism of your essays.

Let's say you have your completed essay open in WPS Office. With the help of WPS AI spell check, proofreading and spell-checking would become much easier. Simply click on "Accept All" to make all the necessary changes.

Style and Clarity Enhancement:

Beyond just fixing errors, WPS AI offers suggestions to improve your writing style and clarity. It helps you refine your sentence structure, choose more precise words, and eliminate unnecessary jargon. This ensures that your arguments are presented clearly and effectively, making your essays more compelling and easier to understand.

Writing Assistance:

WPS AI acts as a writing assistant, providing guidance on how to continue developing your ideas. Whether you’re stuck on how to transition between paragraphs or need help expanding on a particular point, the AI offers suggestions and tips to keep your writing process smooth and efficient. This can be especially helpful in maintaining a logical flow and ensuring that all your points are well-supported and clearly articulated.

FAQs About Starting an Essay

1. what is the purpose of the introduction in an essay.

The purpose of the introduction in an essay is to familiarize the reader with the topic, highlighting its significance and relevance. It captures the reader's interest while providing essential background information. Additionally, the introduction outlines the main points of the essay and presents the thesis statement, which acts as the core argument that forms the foundation of the entire essay. By laying out these components, the introduction clarifies the importance of the topic and prepares the reader for what lies ahead in the essay.

2. What is a topic sentence?

A topic sentence is a statement that conveys the primary idea of a paragraph. It conveys the main point and establishes the paragraph's focus, ensuring that all subsequent sentences are connected to this key idea. Every paragraph in your paper should include a topic sentence to clarify its purpose.

3. Why do I need a thesis statement?

A thesis statement is crucial because it defines the main argument of an essay, guiding the writer's direction and helping the reader understand the central focus. It serves as a roadmap for the content that follows, ensuring that all points are relevant to the main idea.

4. How can I make my essay introduction stand out?

To create a memorable essay introduction, begin with an engaging hook, such as an intriguing fact, a thought-provoking quote, or a vivid illustration. Additionally, ensure that your introduction is concise, focused, and directly related to the main topic of the essay. This approach will draw the reader in and establish a solid foundation for your argument.

Create Compelling Essays With WPS Office

Learning how to start an essay will ultimately help you transform your ideas into a compelling narrative. All you need is a prompt and a topic to craft the best essay possible. Remember to infuse your work with a bit of heart to give it a personalized touch, making your writing truly unique and engaging. WPS Office is an excellent tool to help you achieve a well-crafted essay. It assists in forming proper sentences and generating new ideas, ensuring your essay is both coherent and creative.

With features like grammar and spelling checks, style and clarity enhancement, and writing assistance, WPS Office supports you every step of the way in your writing process. Download WPS Office now and experience its capabilities for yourself. It’s designed to make essay writing easier and more efficient, allowing you to focus on expressing your ideas and arguments effectively.

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Voting as a Civic Responsibility, Essay Example

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Words: 287

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Voting is a process whereby individuals, such as an electorate or gathering, come together to make a choice or convey an opinion, typically after debates, discussions, or election campaigns. Like paying taxes, jury duty, and obeying the law, voting is also considered a civic responsibility. Voting ensures that one actively participates in the wider life of the community in a knowledgeable, caring, and productive manner with an emphasis on the greater good by electing responsible leaders. Voting protects the democratic rights of every citizen as the leaders will be motivated to represent their interests. Moreover, voting enhances the economy, social agendas, environmental policies, foreign policies, accountability, and human rights through fair representation by elected leaders. Voting also enables the citizens to be part of the country’s decision-making on issues affecting them.

Failing to vote is a sign of giving up on an individual’s constitutional rights. The Constitution of the United States recommends voting as a fundamental human right to ensure accountability in representation. Failing to vote shall lead to incompetent leaders being elected, thus derailing the development of the community. Voter education will be critical to ensure high voter turnout during elections. The sanitization should entail providing non-partisan and unbiased information to convince the citizens to register as voters and learn about the ballot regulations and their candidates. Candidates should lead the education as they conduct their political campaigns.

Moreover, advertisements, stump speeches, and theme songs should be emphasized on all media platforms. Companies should take at least two hours weekly to educate their workers on the election procedures and the importance of participation in the general election. Lastly, the government should make the voting periods public holidays and even allow voting during weekends to ensure a high turnout.

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Essay on Election for Students and Children

500+ words essay on election.

Election is the process through which people can express their political opinion. They express this opinion by public voting to choose a political leader . Furthermore, this political leader would have authority and responsibility. Most noteworthy, Election is a formal group decision making the process. Also, the selected political leader would hold public office. The election is certainly a vital pillar of democracy. This is because; Election ensures that the government is of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Characteristics of Election

First of all, suffrage is an important part of Election . Most noteworthy, suffrage refers to the right to vote in Elections. The question of who may vote is certainly an important issue. The electorate probably never includes the entire population. Almost all countries prohibit individuals under the age of majority from voting. For example, in India, the age of majority is attainable at the age of 18 years.

The nomination of a candidate is also an important characteristic of Election. This means to officially suggest someone for Election. Nomination refers to the process of selecting a candidate for election to a public office. Furthermore, endorsements or testimonials are public statements to support a candidate’s nomination.

Another essential characteristic of Election is electoral systems. Electoral systems refer to detailed constitutional arrangements and voting systems. Furthermore, detailed constitutional arrangements and voting systems convert the vote into a political decision.

The first step is the tally of votes. For this purpose, there is the use of various vote counting systems and ballot. Then comes the determination of the result on the basis of the tally. Also, the categorization of most systems is as either proportional or majoritarian.

Scheduling refers to arranging and controlling of Elections. Elected officials are accountable to the people. Therefore, they must return to the voters at regular intervals of time. Elected officials must do that so as to seek a mandate to continue in office. Above all, most countries arrange elections at fixed regular intervals.

An election campaign is also an integral part of Election. Election campaign refers to an organized effort to positively influence the decision making of a particular group. Consequently, politicians compete with each other by trying to woo more and more individuals.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Importance of Election

First of all, the Election is a peaceful and efficient way of choosing political leaders. Furthermore, citizens of a Nation choose a leader by casting their votes. In this way, the citizens are able to choose an individual whose views appeal to them most. Hence, people are able to exercise their will in political leadership.

An election is an excellent opportunity for people to express their resentment. Most noteworthy, if people are unhappy with a particular leadership, then they can remove it from power. People can certainly replace an undesirous leadership with a better alternative through Election.

The election is a handsome opportunity for political participation. Furthermore, it is a way by which new issues can be raised in public. In most democratic countries, common citizens are allowed to contest elections independently.

Consequently, a citizen could introduce reforms which are not any political party’s agenda. Also, in most democratic countries, a citizen could form a new political party to contest Election.

Election helps keep the power of political leaders in check. The ruling parties cannot afford to do any wrongdoing to the public due to the risk of losing Election. Hence, Election serves as an efficient power check and control for those in the ruling power.

To sum it up, Election is the symbol of political freedom. Most noteworthy, it is the tool which puts authority in the hands of common people. Democracy certainly would be non-functional without it. People must realize the value of Elections and come out in large numbers to vote.

Q1 What are electoral systems?

A1  Electoral systems are detailed constitutional arrangements and voting systems. These detailed constitutional arrangements and voting systems convert the vote into a political decision.

Q2 How Election helps keep the power of the political leaders in check?

A2 Elections certainly help keep the power of the political leaders in check. This is because political leaders cannot afford to do any wrongdoing to the public due to the risk of losing Election

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Essay: Voting

America holds more elections than any other democracy. The reason is federalism. Because of decentralization there are more offices for the electorate to fill and thus more elections. Of course, the elections that receive the most attention and the largest voter turnout are federal elections, particularly presidential elections.

But there are two perplexing issues that force us ask why we should vote at all. The first points out that since individual votes are not decisive, it might be irrational to vote. The second shows that if voters have a sufficient number of choices there is no electoral procedure that can accurately establish the public’s preferences. In short, this position contends that no voting system is fair.

In political science a school known as “rational choice” argues that it is a waste of time to vote. These scholars proved mathematically and by experience that any single vote is unlikely to be decisive in any election. That makes voting, in their view, irrational and leads to the disturbing conclusion that your vote does not in fact count. The chances of your vote being decisive go down as the prominence of the election goes up. So more people vote in elections where their vote is least significant. That makes voting particularly irrational in presidential elections. Of course, this school of thought has have a very narrow definition of rationality. Rationality, in their view, is just maximizing your economic well-being. Since your vote is not decisive, you really do not influence who holds office or the laws passed by office holders. If your vote was decisive, it would make sense to vote since you could determine policies that would improve your well-being. But instead when you vote you are spending your resources—time, effort, money for gas—on an activity with no personal benefit. This criticism, however, depends on most people not believing it. Paradoxically if everyone behaved the way rational choice scholars recommend, voting would become more rational since your vote would be the only one and therefore the decisive one.

Does this mean that Americans are in fact in the grip of a deep irrational psychosis when they vote?

It would surely be odd if the most prosperous nation on Earth were filled with people incapable of determining their interests. Undoubtedly for many the reason is a sense of civic duty. Self-government means selecting those who wield power on our behalf. Even if our participation has little individual influence, we know that living in a free, self-governing society is a profound gift that others have died to create and preserve. Of course, by the standards of rational choice dying for your country could count as irrational too. Even if an individual vote does not count, it does contribute to shaping public opinion, which is an incredibly powerful force in a democracy.

The second and potentially more troubling question about voting is whether any voting system can be both fair and actually determine what the public wants.

At the core of the American republic is the principle of consent of the governed, or as Alexander Hamilton put it, “Here, sir, the people govern” (Alexander Hamilton “Remarks on the U.S. House of Representatives, at the New York state convention on the adoption of the Federal Constitution,” July 27, 1788). That presumes that we can identify what the people want and our primary mechanism for this is through elections that indicate voter preferences. But a problem emerges from the fact that there is no system of voting that is both fair and accurately reflects the public’s wishes. This is known as Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem, named after the economist Kenneth Arrow. While Arrow proved the theorem mathematically, the logic of the proof is easy to grasp and can be seen just by considering presidential elections. For example, in the 1992 election Bill Clinton won with 43 percent of the vote while George Bush received 38 percent and Ross Perot 19 percent.  What if the Perot voters preferred Bush over Clinton and would have voted for him if Perot had not run? Bush would have won with 57 percent of the vote. While it is extremely unlikely that they all would have preferred Bush there is in fact evidence that Perot’s candidacy cost Bush the election. Regardless, the election shows that the third most popular candidate could have won the election. And the problem is not solved if you only have two competitive candidates. Undoubtedly there were many Republicans and Democrats who had other candidates they would have preferred to vote for but who lost their party’s nomination or did not run at all. While this example shows the problem of plurality system, Arrow showed that it afflicts all voting systems. The conclusion is that there is no perfect method of voting and thus no way to truly know the public’s preferences. Because nothing works unless it is perfect.

Fortunately this problem is not catastrophic for the American political system. In fact, the Founders were well aware of the problems with various voting systems. While they believed in consent of the governed, they were also deeply afraid of majority tyranny.

The goal of the Constitution, as Madison said, was to “refine and enlarge the public views” not simply capitulate to every whim of the public (James Madison, Federalist No. 10 , 1788).

And public opinion can be ephemeral. What the public initially wants might not be what it would want after sober reflection. And just because the majority wants something in no guarantee that what it wants is appropriate. If five muggers take a vote before robbing you, their theft is not made legitimate by the fact that at least three of them voted to unburden you of your possessions. In the same way, if the public voted to deny your right to freedom of speech, the fact that they voted does not make it less unconstitutional. The Constitution’s complex institutional arrangements are designed to slow down the legislative process so that laws cannot be passed with undue haste and without deliberation. Thus the Constitution itself seems to recognize that there is no such thing as truly knowing exactly what the public wants at any given moment. The United States complex legislative process is the best method for determining the public interest since it slows down decision making and forces deliberation.

Even though there is no perfect system for determining public opinion, there is no doubt that public opinion wields immense authority in a democratic republic. Or perhaps more accurately those who can to speak on its behalf and can shape it wield immense authority. It was Alexis de Tocqueville who best explained the reason for the astonishing power of public opinion in a democratic age. Because everyone is the political equal of everyone else in a democratic republic, no single person’s opinion is considered better than anyone else’s. However, because we are equal we assume that we all have the same ability to reason. This leads us to conclude that whatever the majority thinks has the balance of reason on its side. Reliance on public opinion is then exacerbated by our tendency to retreat into our own private lives rather than engaging with other fellow citizens. But as this impulse towards privatism increases, individuals look even more to what the public says to shape our opinions.  In the end, public opinion exercises a kind despotic authority.

“In America,” Tocqueville explains, “the majority draws a formidable circle around thought. Inside those limits, the writer is free; but unhappiness awaits him if he dare to leave them…he is the butt of mortifications of all kinds and persecutions every day. A political career is closed to him: he has offended the only power that has the capacity to open it up. Everything is refused to him, even glory” (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America , 1835).

Making Tocqueville’s analysis all the more prescient was that he made it before the advent of public opinion polling. With polling all of the problems he identified have been exacerbated. Mass communication, particularly the telephone, made it possible to ask large numbers of Americans their attitudes on a range of political questions, but polling also created its own problems. Since public opinion exercises such power, there are incentives to create polls that show that the public supports the position of the person doing the polling. And polls can be easily manipulated to generate results rather than accurately measure opinion. That is why it is crucial to always be skeptical of opinion polls at least until examining the questions used by the pollsters. Leading questions, ambiguous questions, double-barreled questions can all distort results.  Push-polls, which are polls filled with leading questions, are one tried and true method of fraudulent pollsters.

American voters doing their civic duty at the polls.

One must even be careful about the order in which questions are asked. Scholars have shown that switching the question order can lead to dramatically different results because prior questions can prime those being polled to favor one response over another in subsequent questions.

But perhaps most troubling is that the public is often profoundly uninformed about important political questions. For decades scholars have found that individuals often give completely different answers to the same question with no discernible reason why.  The best explanation for this is that the public is often rationally ignorant about important issues. Rational ignorance means that individuals recognize the cost of obtaining information exceeds the benefit. It does not mean that Americans are stupid.  Instead, they lead busy lives and know that their ability to shape political events is limited. They devote their scarce resources to things that immediately affect them.  While rational ignorance makes the randomness of public opinion polls explicable, it does nothing to ameliorate the troubling conclusion that we often base our own opinions and that government officials base their decisions on measures of public opinion that do not in fact measure public opinion at all.

The instability of public opinion raises the unsettling thought that public opinion can be shaped. This can make public opinion a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy where if you can make something perceived to be true you can make it true. That also implies that the media has extraordinary power to manipulate public opinion. The media is most responsible for disseminating political information and shaping opinion. Elite institutions such as the New York Times or The Wall Street Journal decide what stories the public hears and give their own interpretation of what those stories mean. Those choices then shape the choices of other media outlets who take their cues from prestigious national media organizations. This makes having a range of media sources with a range of political perspectives all the more important. Without diversity among media organizations, the groupthink of a few shapes the opinions of the many.

As with the other issues discussed in this section, the problems with accurately measuring public opinion point to the wisdom of the American Founders who did not want public opinion to simply be accepted and acted upon. To protect individual rights, particularly those of political minorities, opinion needed to be filtered through representative institutions which themselves would be divided and checked by each other. The deliberative process created by the Constitution would help tutor public opinion rather than obsequiously cater to it. Additionally, the decentralization of power created by federalism allows for a more accurate approximation of the public interest on many divisive questions. Trying to gauge “national” opinion on local questions is both impossible and counterproductive. Allowing states and local governments to decide policy on state and local questions means that those closest to the problem to voice their opinion and shape the eventual outcome.

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If you care about social impact, why is voting important?

Your civic duty isn't the only reason your vote matters.

By Robert Wiblin · Published October 2020

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If   you   care   about   social   impact,   why   is   voting important?  

On this page:.

• 1 Why is voting important? It’s not just about civic duty.
• 2 The probability of one vote changing an election
• 3 Governments are so large which raises the expected value of voting
• 4 What if you’re wrong?
• 5 Is deciding how to vote too much effort?
• 6 How much does it cost to drive one extra vote?
• 7 Overall, is it altruistic to vote?

Could one vote — your vote — swing an entire election? Most of us abandoned this seeming fantasy not too long after we learned how elections work.

But the chances are higher than you might think. If you’re in a competitive district in a competitive election, the odds that your vote will flip a national election often fall between 1 in 1 million and 1 in 10 million.

That’s a very small probability, but it’s big compared to your chances of winning the lottery, and it’s big relative to the enormous impact governments can have on the world.

Each four years the United States federal government allocates $17,500,000,000,000, so a 1 in 10 million chance of changing the outcome of a US national election gives an average American some degree of influence over $1.75 million.

That means the expected importance of voting — the probability of changing an election’s result multiplied by the impact if you do — might, depending on your personal circumstances, be very high.

This could, in itself, be a good argument for voting.

Fortunately there is a significant amount of academic research on the importance of elections and how likely one vote is to change the outcome, so I’ve pulled it together to estimate the average value of one vote for the right person.

The answer, as you might expect, depends a great deal on the circumstances of any given election, and indeed most votes predictably have no impact.

But there are common situations in which the expected value of casting a vote will be far higher than anything else you could hope to do in the same amount of time.

Why exactly? Let me explain.

Table of Contents

Why is voting important? It’s not just about civic duty.

In this article, we’ll demonstrate that, for many people, voting is important, but not (or at least not only) because of the normal arguments about it being your civic duty.

Your vote could actually change the world for the better, and if you’re in a competitive race the chances are high enough that you should think hard about hitting the voting booth.

First I’ll investigate the two key things that determine the impact of your vote:

• The chances of your vote changing an election’s outcome in a range of different situations
• How much better some candidates are for the world as a whole, compared to others

Then I’ll discuss what I think are the best arguments against the importance of voting elections:

• If an election is competitive, that means other people disagree about which option is better, and you’re at some risk of voting for the worse candidate by mistake.
• While voting itself doesn’t take long, knowing enough to accurately pick which candidate is better for the world actually does take substantial effort — effort that could be better allocated elsewhere.

Finally we’ll look into the impact of donating to campaigns or working to ‘get out the vote’, which can be effective ways to generate additional votes for your preferred candidate.

We’ll use figures for United States presidential elections, because they have an unusually large impact on our priority problems , more of our readers are American citizens than any other single nationality, and more work has been done to model them than other kinds of elections. However, similar reasoning can be applied to elections in other countries.

The probability of one vote changing an election

Given how infrequently national elections are won by one vote, we can’t just look at the historical record and observe the fraction for which that’s true. While we do have examples of large tied elections , there’ll never be enough real-life elections to accurately determine their frequency empirically.

We need a different approach: statistical modelling.

To see how the method works, we can start small. Imagine that you’re on a small committee making a decision. The odds that you’ll change the outcome of a vote like that — assuming 2 options and 4 other voters, each 50% likely to vote for either option — is about 19% . We could confirm that empirically if we liked.

We can then work upwards to the size of national elections: with 8 voters it’s 14% , with 16 voters it’s about 10%, with 32 voters about 7%, and so on. In fact, the likelihood you’ll change the outcome ends up being roughly proportional to one over the square root of the number of voters.

Statisticians who specialise in politics add real polling data to the mix, and compare it to actual election results to figure out how accurately polling predicts how people will vote. This gives them a ‘probability distribution’ for the likelihood that each elector will choose to vote for each candidate.

With all of this information in hand, we can go ahead and model tens of billions of elections to estimate how often the entire result will be changed by a single vote.

The famous statistician Andrew Gelman of Columbia University has done just this for US presidential elections, which are broken down into states, and has published several papers outlining the results. 1 2

He found that if you’re in a ‘safe state’ like California, the odds of your vote changing the outcome of a presidential election really is effectively zero (the model spits out 1 in 100 trillion, but it’s very hard to assign meaningful probabilities to something so unlikely). Something similar would be true for voters in ‘very safe seats’ in the UK or Australia.

By contrast, in a small US state polling around 50/50 in a close election nationally — for instance New Mexico, Iowa, or New Hampshire in the 2000 elections — the probability could get as high as 1 in 3 million. (The article Vote for Charity’s Sake offers a nice overview of this research, and we’ve stuck some details in this footnote.)

In a wider range of ‘tipping point states’ in reasonably close elections, the probability is lower, and closer to 1 in 10 million.

(Note that what matters isn’t the state in which polling is closest, but rather the states that might put someone over the edge of winning the election as a whole — the ‘tipping point state’. If one candidate is ahead nationally then they’ll probably be ahead in the ‘tipping point state’ too.)

As of October 14 2020, Joe Biden’s substantial lead in public opinion polls means Gelman’s modelling indicates that there are only four states where the odds of one vote changing the outcome is greater than 1 in 10 million: New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. 3

However, a perhaps unexpected finding is that even when an election doesn’t look that close, the probability of one vote changing the outcome in a potential ‘tipping point state’ rarely falls to less than half of what it would be in a close-seeming election. This is shown visually in the figure below from FiveThirtyEight’s election modelling. The underlying reason is that opinion polls are often off by a large margin, so when an election is close on election day we can’t rule out that it will be a blow-out for one side — and, similarly, even when a candidate seems to be substantially ahead, we can’t confidently rule out the election being close.

In the UK or Australia, an equivalent analysis would look at the likelihood that a party gains a majority in parliament by one seat, and that that seat is won by one vote.

The factors that push up the leverage of each voter are:

• An election being close to 50/50 nationally
• An election being close to 50/50 in a given ‘tipping point’ seat or voting region
• Being able to accurately determine which elections are closest
• Being able to accurately identify which seats or regions are closest (in which case expected influence becomes concentrated in those places)
• Fewer total voters

Australia has a tenth as many voters as the US, and the UK has a fifth — which, all else equal, would make each vote 2-3x more likely to flip the outcome of a close election. 4 Polling is similarly precise in all of these different countries. And the likely ‘tipping point’ seats in US, UK and Australian elections all contain a similar fraction of the population — 10 to 20% — so power is concentrated in a similarly-sized subset of voters.

So from the above we can anticipate that in a similarly tight election, in a ‘tipping point seat’, the odds of a vote changing the outcome would be a few times higher in those countries than in the US.

A similar analysis can be applied to any sort of election.

A common objection to this line of reasoning is that if an election is as close as one vote, it will be re-run or decided by the courts anyway, and so a single vote can never actually make a difference.

To see how this is mistaken, you need to conceptualise the vote margin in large elections as shifting the probability of each candidate winning. If you’re ahead, each extra vote makes you more likely to win without a court battle or a re-run. And if you’re narrowly behind, each extra vote increases your chances of successfully disputing the result. So long as we’re unsure what the vote margin will be, the expected impact of each extra vote remains the same as it would be if all its impact were entirely concentrated on a perfectly tied election.

Finally, there’s another quite different way one can model the impact that each vote has, but it won’t much change our conclusion, so for simplicity I’ll leave it in this footnote. 5

Alright, now that we have a sense of the likelihood of swinging an election, we need to know how valuable it would be to do so.

Governments are so large which raises the expected value of voting

Compared to the likelihood of a vote changing the outcome of an election, how much it matters who wins i) is harder to quantify, ii) depends more on your values, and iii) varies widely depending on the candidates running for office. But a quick scan of the numbers and issues at stake suggests that the impact will often be substantial.

In most rich countries, governments tax and spend 25-55% of a country’s GDP. As a rule of thumb, you can roughly think of them as directing a third of a country’s income.

That’s enough money per person, and per vote, that positively influencing how it’s spent can be important enough to offset the low chances of any given vote swinging an election.

Again using US to illustrate, over the next four years 6 the US federal government will spend about $17.5 trillion .

Written out as a number it looks like $17,500,000,000,000. That’s $53,000 for each American, or $129,000 for each vote cast in 2016.

If you multiply all that spending through a 1 in 10 million chance of changing the outcome, in a swing state like New Hampshire, it comes to $1.75 million. That’s the fraction of the budget you might ‘expect’ to influence by voting in a swing state, in the statistical sense of expectation .

If that number sounds unexpectedly large, remember that we’re shifting around roughly a third of the economy’s output, over several years, and we’re concentrating on the impact a voter can have if they’re among the privileged 20% of the country that lives in a state which can plausibly determine the election outcome.

In the US’s state-based system, 80% of eligible voters can’t hope to change the outcome — but that leaves the remaining 20% with 5 times the leverage they’d have otherwise.

Of course, much of the US federal budget is quite stable, but keep in mind that stickiness in how money gets spent cuts both ways: it makes it harder to shift the budget, but if you do, it means those changes will probably stay around for longer.

It’s common for parties to want to shift how several percent of GDP gets spent. But the budget doesn’t even have to be that flexible for your impact to matter.

For example, if one party will spend 0.5% of GDP on foreign aid, and the other will spend 0.3%, a vote with a 1 in 10 million chance of changing the outcome would shift — in expectation — $17,800 into foreign aid.

There are other kinds of government spending that can have huge impacts as well: R&D into new clean energy technologies is probably one of the most cost-effective ways to limit climate change, and think about the enormous return the world is getting from countries like the UK that decided, years ago, to fund preliminary research into coronavirus vaccines.

But choosing which taxes to impose and how to spend the money raised is just one thing the government does, one which happens to be easy to quantify in dollar terms.

There are major non-budgetary impacts as well, which include:

• Foreign policy: Elected governments decide things such as how much to trade with foreigners (which can affect their wellbeing too), how much to raise tensions with other countries in pursuit of foreign policy goals, and ultimately whether to go to war. Foreign policy is often determined without a lot of input from legislatures, which means a few elected officials have substantial discretion — and that’s especially important for countries with large militaries or nuclear weapons.
• Stabilising the business cycle: Governments work to raise total spending during recessions and decrease total spending when inflation is too high, in order to limit excessive ups and downs in the economy.
• Regulations: Elected governments make decisions about all sorts of regulations, for instance on consumer products, workplace conditions, environmental standards, and so on.
• Immigration: Elected governments decide how many foreigners can come live in a country and on what basis, ranging from skilled migrants, to economic migrants, to political refugees.
• Social freedoms: Elected governments can influence whether LGBTQ+ people can be public about their sexual orientation and whether they can get married, which recreational drugs people are free to use, how police go about enforcing laws, whether voluntary euthanasia is permitted, and so on.
• Political freedom: Elected governments can try to entrench themselves, or reduce the ability of the public to reflect on political questions, by harassing political opponents, being generally misleading, shutting down hostile media outlets, or making it harder for people to vote.

Measuring the social impact of the different approaches governments might take to these issues is difficult. But it could easily be more important than the shifts in spending that result from a change in government.

To illustrate, imagine that you think the chance of a nuclear war over four years under one presidential candidate is 1 in 1,000, and the chance with the other is 1 in 500. While highly uncertain, these probabilities are both figures nuclear security specialists might give if you asked them about the likelihood of nuclear war. How valuable would it be to vote for the safer leader?

To answer this, we can think about how much society would be willing to pay to avoid a nuclear war. It’s really hard to estimate, but let’s spitball it and say that each US resident would be willing to pay $1 million to avoid dying in a nuclear war, on average. (For comparison, the US government will spend about $7 million or so to save a life.) A total nuclear war would kill around 80% of the US population. 7 If you do the math, then a vote with a 1 in 10 million chance of changing the election outcome would be worth $25,000 to your fellow citizens through its effects on the likelihood of a nuclear war alone. And a nuclear war would obviously also affect people overseas, as well as untold future generations.

The policies which are most impactful are not always the most salient. George W. Bush’s famous choice to pursue the Iraq War resulted in the removal of Saddam Hussein, though at the cost of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives and trillions of dollars in spending. 8 But President Bush also dramatically raised US spending on antiviral drugs for impoverished victims of HIV in Africa. This ‘PEPFAR’ program probably would not have been pursued in his absence, and likely prevented several million deaths .

Though the above is not a systematic survey, and some examples are atypical, to me they suggest that the outcome of elections will often have significant consequences.

Of course, not every election is that important. Sometimes all the candidates likely to win an election are similarly good overall, or if one of them is better it’s hard to figure out which it is.

In particular, within some electoral systems — for instance those with compulsory voting and electoral candidates chosen by politicians or party professionals — the tendency for parties to strategically bunch together in the middle of the political spectrum is strong.

More stark differences tend to arise in places with low voter turnout, few checks on executive power, plurality voting along with more than 2 viable candidates, and party primaries in which only the most motivated voters participate. In those elections the differences between candidates tend to be larger, meaning it’s more often important for the right group to win, and it’s easier to tell which group that is.

What if you’re wrong?

So far I’ve argued that voting can represent a great opportunity for social impact if:

• You’re in a close district in a close election
• There is a noticeable difference in the desirability of different candidates winning

But there’s a sophisticated argument against this view:

You can only swing an election if roughly as many people are voting for the outcome you prefer as the outcome you oppose. But if the public as a whole is roughly split down the middle, why should you trust your own judgement on the matter? Sure, you’ve looked into it and think that your view is right. But so have many other voters and about half of them still disagree with you. So because there’s no principled reason to trust your judgement over that of others, even after doing your political research you should still think you’re only about 50% likely to be voting the right way.

This is an application of the case for epistemic modesty , and it has some bite. If you think half of your fellow voters are getting things wrong, why should you think you’re getting it right?

This uncertainty about whether you’re truly voting the right way reduces the expected value of voting. If you had no confidence at all in your judgement — in other words, if you thought you were as likely to be wrong as you were to be right — the expected value would fall all the way to zero.

However, to go as far as that this case for intellectual modesty requires that other voters be your ‘epistemic peers’ — basically that they be as smart, informed, honest, and motivated as you. And there are a number of reasons you might think you can cast a ballot more wisely and altruistically than average.

First, the level of information most voters have about politics and policy is quite low. Some typical examples in the US, taken from Ilya Somin’s 2013 book Democracy and Political Ignorance include:

• “A survey before the 2014 election … found that only 38 percent of Americans knew that the Republicans controlled the House of Representatives at the time, and the same number knew that the Democrats had a majority in the Senate. Not knowing which party controls these institutions makes it difficult for voters to assign credit or blame for their performance.”

“For years, there has been an ongoing debate over the future of federal spending… Yet a 2014 survey found that only 20 percent of Americans realize that the federal government spends more money on Social Security than on foreign aid, transportation, and interest on the government debt. Some 33 percent believe that foreign aid is the biggest item on this list, even though it is actually the smallest, amounting to about one percent of the federal budget, compared with 17 percent for Social Security.”

“In 1964, in the midst of the Cold War, only 38 percent were aware that the Soviet Union was not a member of the U.S-led NATO alliance.”

This should not be surprising and in my view is no reason to think poorly of your fellow citizens. People have jobs to do, family members to take care of, and personal projects to pursue. For most folks, following the ins and outs of policy debates is neither easy nor rewarding, and because they don’t live in close districts it’s not the best way for them to improve the world, either. On top of that, following the news can be bad for people’s focus and mental health .

While the polling above appears dismal, there is an active academic debate about how problematic it really is for voters to lack the basic knowledge they would seemingly need to vote wisely. The damage is partly reduced by uninformed voters making different random errors that cancel out, people using heuristics like ‘am I better off than I was four years ago’, and politicians paying attention to things voters are more likely to know (e.g. ‘I want better healthcare’) while ignoring their views on things they won’t (e.g. how best to organise a healthcare system).

Nonetheless, for our purposes the fact remains that simply looking up basic background information — like who is in government, where different parties or people stand on the issues, what experts say about those issues when surveyed, and so on — will give you a big edge over others when it comes to determining which candidate will produce better outcomes.

If you’re trying to figure out how best to treat a disease you have, it’s one thing to think you can do better than your doctor, and quite another to think you can do better than a random stranger.

Secondly, if you’ve read this article to this point, you’re likely unusually interested in figuring out which election outcome is best for the world as a whole.

But not all voters focus on that question. Some always vote for the same party as a matter of habit, without giving much thought to the expected impact on the world. Others care about which outcome is best for them and their family, or the country in which they live. Others vote to express their ideals, or their loyalty to a group, or just for fun.

If you truly aspire to vote for the outcome that is ideal for the whole world, considering everyone’s wellbeing in an impartial way, you are more likely to succeed at that goal than the many other voters who aren’t even trying.

Finally, even if it were individually rational to decide there’s no value in trying to figure out the right way to vote because of ‘epistemic modesty’, the approach would foster collective laziness — leading all voters to be less informed than they otherwise would be, and likely worsening political outcomes. That would make it strange to recommend it to you all as a general policy.

Overall, while the risk of mistakenly voting for the wrong candidate reduces the value of voting, I don’t think it reduces it dramatically — at least not in the most important cases, where the difference between your options is a stark one.

If you think your research can get you to be 75% confident about which candidate is better, that is half as valuable as being 100% confident you’re making the right decision.

Is deciding how to vote too much effort?

While we haven’t been able to place a clear dollar value on a vote in a close district in a close election, we saw that in the United States each of those votes influences more than a million dollars worth of government spending, and could have the same or greater impact in other ways.

This suggests that a vote for someone who substantially increases the value of that spending — or otherwise improves government policy — could be worth the equivalent of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to your fellow citizens.

If you divide that by the time it takes to vote — minutes in some countries, hours in others — this looks like a great opportunity to do good.

Compare it to earning money to give to the very best charity you can find: even if you assume that the organisation can turn $1 into something as valuable as giving other people in your country $100, you’d need to be able to give ~$1,000 in an hour to make it as valuable as a vote worth $100,000.

But the true cost of voting is much more than the time it takes to vote. In practice you need to do the research described above to figure out who is best to vote for. This additional effort substantially reduces the good you can do per hour.

Some people will follow politics and policy and form views about who it is best to vote for regardless. For them, figuring out how to vote is not an additional cost beyond what they are doing anyway. They may even find the process fun or energising.

But others don’t like politics and wouldn’t spend any time on it unless they felt it was their responsibility to do so. For them we can think of each hour spent deciding who to vote for as substituting for an hour of work or study that they could have otherwise directed towards improving the world.

How long does it take to decide how to vote? That will depend a lot on the election and how difficult it is to analyse the issues at stake. In some countries one party is clearly far more focused on the wellbeing of the world as a whole, or simply far more competent, than the other. But in other countries it’s legitimately hard to tell what outcome will be best.

Hypothetically, we can imagine someone who doesn’t follow politics at all between elections, and then tunes in to make a decision on who to vote for, and starts reading to try to make an informed choice. If this would require them to do the equivalent of a week’s work, it would increase the effective cost of voting 10-100 fold.

If they’re in a high-impact job already, working to solve a pressing global problem, it would be easy to see how it could be better for them to remain focused on the work in which they’re most specialised, and leave politics to others. Depending on someone’s salary, working for a week and donating the money to an effective charity could also easily be more impactful than doing research and then casting a vote.

If you’re short of time, I can think of two shortcuts you could use to quickly cast a vote that’s more likely to be for the right person than the wrong one.

The first is just to find someone you think is bright, shares your values, and follows politics more than you do, and ask them who to vote for.

The second is to look at opinion polling globally. Even if your country is split down the middle, the world as a whole might very strongly prefer one candidate, 9 which is a very important piece of information from an ‘epistemic modesty’ perspective. Foreigners don’t get to vote in other countries’ elections, but they too have preferences about the outcome, are affected by the results, and their outside perspective might even give them insights that locals are missing.

Regardless, one thing to remember is that it will be easiest to tell which candidate is best to vote for in an election in which the difference is large — and these are also the elections in which a vote is of greatest value.

Another is that political participation is open to anyone who, for one reason or another, doesn’t have an especially impactful job at the time.

It’s hard to give general advice here, because in addition to all the variables like election closeness discussed above, individual voter’s opportunity costs vary a great deal. But if I had to give a rule I would say:

• If you already follow politics well enough to vote wisely (and you’d vote in a close election, etc.), it will often make sense to vote.

If you wouldn’t follow politics except in order to have a social impact, and you have the opportunity to instead spend the requisite time specialising in a high-impact job working on a pressing problem , or earning to give for effective charities, or something similar, that will often be the better option.

How much does it cost to drive one extra vote?

What if you think the outcome of an election is important enough that you want to do more than just vote yourself?

For most of us, the low hanging fruit is to contact friends and family in competitive districts, encourage them to vote, and make the case for our preferred candidate. Unsurprisingly research shows that personal appeals from friends and family have a big impact, and have 10 times or more than the effect of an appeal from a stranger.

But having exhausted your friends, you might decide you want to give money to a campaign as well. How much do you have to give to get your candidate one extra vote?

With billions of dollars spent on political advocacy in the US each year, this has been the focus of substantial research. Campaigns can randomly target ‘get out the vote’ efforts on some voters and not others, and then see how much more likely those voters are to show up.

This table from the 2015 edition of Get Out The Vote summarises the results of those sort of experiments, with the cost per vote in the final column:

According to these studies, for those methods shown to work — such as door-knocking or phone-banking — persuading one stranger to vote for your preferred candidate costs $30-100, or a few hours of work as a volunteer.

If, having compared the candidates and the closeness of the election, you think a vote for the right person is in some sense worth thousands of dollars, that sounds pretty good. However, it has to be compared to the best alternative ways to use your money to improve the world, which may also offer a huge return on investment.

On top of that I’ve been advised by researchers I trust, who have investigated the topic in detail, that these figures are underestimates, at least for the big elections you’re most likely to follow.

That’s for multiple reasons. One is that all results in social science tend to look weaker over time as they’re scrutinised and people attempt to replicate them.

Another is that political campaigns, at least in the US, have more money for each voter they’re chasing than they did in the past. New technologies also make them better at targeting the voters most likely to be convinced. As a result, swing voters in swing states are already contacted with campaign messages again and again, reducing the impact of any further prompts.

For instance, a 2020 paper looking at TV ads in recent US presidential elections suggested a cost per vote of $100-1,000, which is probably now more typical.

However, not all campaigns are as well resourced, and the less funding they have the cheaper it’s likely to be for them to find additional supporters.

The campaigns for Joe Biden and Donald Trump, along with allied groups, are likely to have about $30 per voter in potential tipping point states. Both have set new fundraising records for presidential campaigns. 10

But the Biden campaign had just a tenth as much — $3 per voter — in the 2020 Democratic primaries through Super Tuesday (after which the primaries began to wind down).

That difference is even starker when you consider that a much larger fraction of voters are open to switching their support in primary elections than in general elections (though keep in mind the differences between candidates within a party are less than the differences between parties).

This level of funding in general elections is somewhat unique to the US. Different campaign finance arrangements mean that parties in the UK and Australia both have closer to $10 per voter in a marginal seat. 11 12

In these circumstances the experiments suggesting a cost of $40-100 per vote could even be overestimates, but I haven’t yet investigated the research on the impact of campaign spending outside the US.

The question of when political campaigns are the best use of someone’s charitable giving is also beyond the scope of this article, and seems likely to hinge on how well funded the campaigns are and how large the difference is between candidates.

But if you can encourage someone to vote for <$100, while you think the social value of an extra vote is >$10,000, then it should be possible to make a case that it’s competitive with other options. That is something I hope to investigate in more detail in future.

And if voting yourself is worthwhile, contacting friends and family to encourage them to do the same will also usually be above the bar.

Overall, is it altruistic to vote?

The answer is clearly yes, under the following conditions:

• The election concerns important issues, such as the allocation of large amounts of money, or the foreign policy of a country with a large military
• One candidate is substantially better than the other, and you’re in a position to know which one that is
• The election is somewhat competitive, and you’re able to vote in a competitive seat, or district, or state

In a situation like that, the hour you spend voting is likely to be the most impactful one in your entire year, and could on average get you some influence over how hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars are spent. For this reason I vote whenever I get the chance.

When they vote, some of my friends feel very nervous about whether they’re voting for the right person. While there’s a lot they don’t know, surveys how much the public knows about policy issues suggest that they’re a lot more informed than the average voter, and so their input should increase the odds of the better candidate winning. We shouldn’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.

All of that said, I respect people who consciously opt out of following politics, in order to preserve their focus on other important work that improves the world. Following politics and developing informed views can absorb a great deal of time. While spending one hour voting is highly impactful, spending hundreds of hours tracking politics in between elections isn’t — at least if you aren’t regularly taking action based on what you’re learning.

Finally, while persuading other people to vote takes more time or money than simply voting yourself, in elections where you’re confident one candidate is much better for the world than another, joining or donating to a political campaign may also represent a high-impact way of improving the world.

Has this article helped you better estimate how important it is to vote?

As we noted above, appeals from people they know are much more likely to influence people’s behaviour than TV ads or impersonal mail. Some experiments suggest a personal appeal from a friend could increase someone’s likelihood of voting by as much as 10 percentage points. So consider sharing this article with your friends.

Notes and references

i. Probability of Events that Have Never Occurred: When Is Your Vote Decisive? ii. What is the probability that your vote will make a difference? iii. Empirically investigating the electoral college

In these papers the authors look at various historical presidential elections from the perspective of someone who has access to polling data a few weeks ahead of the vote. With what likelihood should they have expected that one vote would change the outcome?

The first found a probability of 1 in 10 million of a typical single vote being decisive in 1992, with a chance of 1 in 3.5 million for a swing state such as Vermont. The second found a probability of 1 in 60 million for a single vote in a random state, and 1 in 10 million for swing states such as New Mexico or Virginia. That compares to an electorate of around 120 million voters.

As they put it:

‘A probability of 1 in 10 million is tiny but, as discussed by Edlin, Gelman, and Kaplan (2007), can provide a rational reason for voting; in this perspective, a vote is like a lottery ticket with a 1 in 10 million chance of winning, but the payoff is the chance to change national policy and improve (one hopes) the lives of hundreds of millions, compared to the alternative if the other candidate were to win.’

The third paper also looks at the presidential election in 2000, the closest in modern history, and (using a rougher methodology) found that the probability of an average vote changing the outcome was around 1 in 6 million in 2000. If we take the same range from an average to swing state proposed in the second paper, that suggests that voters in the key swing states could have a 1 in 2 million chance of swinging the election.

The reality is that in most states, including California, New York or Texas, an additional vote has no ability to swing the outcome, because these states are not close themselves. Even if they were close, they couldn’t swing the electoral college from one candidate to another, because a close election in California implies an incredibly unbalanced election in the rest of the country. Almost all of their influence instead becomes concentrated on a handful of swing states. ↩

• This piece also builds upon previous articles from the rationality community such as Politics as Charity by Carl Shulman and Voting is like donating thousands of dollars to charity . ↩
• You can see a current and easy-to-read version of the model here , updated figures here , and the numbers we used from October 14 here . ↩
• The chance of a tie in an election with perfectly even polling is proportional to 1 over the square root of the number of voters, and note that sqrt(10) = 3.2 and sqrt(5) = 2.2. ↩

Political parties and candidates know they’re in a competitive and strategic race to get the most votes. If they can’t get elected they can’t achieve anything, so they constantly adapt their positions, and add or remove interest groups from their coalition, to ensure they have a decent chance of winning.

If young voters in the US suddenly started voting at the same rate as seniors — 70% rather than 42% — any political party that didn’t adjust its positions to increase its appeal to those voters would quickly become irrelevant.

So rather than thinking of your vote as having a tiny chance of completely swinging an election outcome, you can instead think of it as having a high chance of nudging every party just a little bit in the direction of the political views held by you and people like you. This is one reason there’s still value in voting, even if this year’s election doesn’t happen to be especially close: by indicating you’ll vote in future years you give politicians much more reason to appeal to you.

I’ll also just add that in multi-party systems, such as those involving proportional representation, rather than completely flip an election result your vote is more likely to change which grouping of parties forms a coalition government, and their relative influence within the coalition.

What both of these alternative analyses have in common is that they replace a very small chance of a hugely valuable outcome, with a higher chance of a somewhat less valuable outcome.

While formalising either of these models is going to be more challenging, I expect that these two changes will usually roughly cancel out, leaving the overall expected value about the same. ↩

As you can vote in all of these elections simultaneously (and often state and local election too!), and on average their terms are four years each, for simplicity I’ll treat them though they were all elected simultaneously each four years.

As you might expect, if you can vote in marginal elections for two of these bodies at once the case for voting will be about twice as strong as if you can only do so for one. ↩

• See this book on the likely deaths from a nuclear war. ↩
• From Wikipedia : “Body counts counted at least 110,600 violent deaths as of April 2009 (Associated Press). The Iraq Body Count project documents 185,000 – 208,000 violent civilian deaths through Feb 2020 in their table.” ↩
• Ipsos: A global view of the 2020 US presidential election
• YouGov: Europe wants Joe Biden
• Pew Research Center: Merkel and Macron trusted globally
• Pew Research Center: Trump’s International Ratings Remain Low, Especially Among Key Allies
• YouGov 2016: How other countries would vote in the American election . ↩
• The most extreme case I could find was the Senate campaign of Al Gross in Alaska who has raised $57 for each person who voted in Alaska in 2016. ↩
• In 2017 the Conservative party spent £18.6m contesting about 10% of the actual seats. Across the whole election 32 million votes were cast. This comes to about $8 USD per voter. ↩

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Importance of Voting Essay | Essay on Importance of Voting for Students and Children in English

February 14, 2024 by Prasanna

Importance of Voting Essay: A concept is well known by all democratic nations since most of the things are decided with elections. Different governors, mayors, judges, and presidents are all selected by the general population through the voting system, or else they are decided upon by the elected officials.

I personally believe that everyone should vote as everyone has a different opinion and in our Indian democracy we have the ability to choose who can preside over in the office, this also gives us an opportunity to have a say in this political world. The entire purpose of a democracy is to be able to have a say in the political scenario and this is to make sure everyone’s voice is heard and this is what makes up a democracy with everyone participating in it.

From a lot of the statistics, it is a known fact that young people don’t vote especially from the age ranging from 18 to 24. We can have different beliefs but this doesn’t mean you remove yourself from the electoral process. On hearing these statistics I was completely shocked because naturally, people tend to assume that everyone votes but that is not the case.

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Long and Short Essays on Importance of Voting for Students and Kids in English

Voting can be defined as a way of expressing one’s own preference or opinion. This is important as everyone can get a say in the crazy political world we live in and that is what makes up a democracy.

Short Essay on Importance of Voting 150 Words in English

Short Essay on Importance of Voting is usually given to classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Citizens of the country constantly complain about how our political climate is bad and worsening day by day and the honest truth is we have a chance to change it for the better. To make these changes we must vote by taking an informed vote and casting it as you should remember every vote counts.

It is mostly the youth of the country from age of 18 to 24 that tend to not vote and this causes a huge backlash in the system as these are the votes that we need. If you don’t like the way your country is running then change that by voting and don’t just complain.

“Voting is not just our right but our duty as well”, this saying goes a long way as it tells us clearly we have responsibilities as citizens of the country. To make sure we citizens run and take good care of our country we must put in our votes. A lot of the time people choose to believe that a single vote won’t make much of a difference but that is far from the truth and people must realize it as soon as possible.

Your choice of voting can have extreme consequences on the people from around the world who mostly do not have the right to vote. We must realize that a lot of the lawmakers are responsible for the various policies, laws, and infrastructure of the country for the future years and we are responsible for how these policies, law, and infrastructure is to turn out by voting.

A lot of people in other countries like Afghanistan cannot vote and some even die fighting for this very right. Most war-stricken countries have had their first elections in recent years even though most of the time they are threatened by the Taliban and certain terrorists. Superpower nation like America set certain policies which can have far-reaching impacts on countries that don’t have the same freedom as freedom of expression or the right to votes.

Citizens of the country constantly complain about how our political climate is bad and worsening day by day and the honest truth is we have a chance to change it for the better. To make these changes we must vote by taking an informed vote and casting it as you should remember every vote counts. It is the youth of the nation that does not vote and we have to change that as quickly as possible.

Long Essay on Importance of Voting 500 Words in English

Long Essay on Importance of Voting is usually given to classes 7, 8, 9, and 10.

The process by which people can express their political opinion is known as voting. Citizens of the country express their political opinion by choosing the desired political leader. This political leader, if he is a lawmaker, will have a huge impact on the way the country will presently run and also in the future, so to make sure we choose the right leader in a time when the political climate is constantly changing and we should be responsible citizens and cast our vote.

It is important to understand that election acts as a pillar for democracy because when all else fails we can still choose the right person to run the country. By not choosing the right leader a lot of people can be affected in the sense it can have far-reaching consequences on people who have nothing to do with our country. So we must understand that voting for the right person can have an impact all around us and can affect our country for a very long time. An election makes sure that the government is of the people, for the people, and by the people.

In an election, it is important to have suffrage which is the right to vote in elections. In India, the age of voting is attainable only at the age of 18, and in most countries where people have the right to vote have almost the same age limit. The electorate usually never includes the entire population. This question of how to have the privilege of voting is quite important. A very notable characteristic of elections is the nomination of a person. The nomination is the process of officially suggesting somebody for the public office and after the testimonials and endorsements are the various public statements that can help support a candidate’s nomination.

The electoral systems play a very vital role in the election. The electoral system includes the voting system and constitution arrangements. This is the process that converts a voting system into a proper political decision which can have long term effects on the country and its people.

In the process of voting the first step is the tally of votes. This is the use of the different ballot and counting systems. After this step, the result is determined based on the tally. Usually, the categorization of these systems can be majoritarian or proportional. Once the tally is over the person with the most tally wins the election. Elected officials are responsible to the people of the country so during different periods they must return to their voters, this is done so the elected officials can seek mandate so they can continue in office. Elections are conducted during fixed intervals of time. Elections can have far-reaching impacts on different parts of the world.

Over the recent past, it has become quite common to talk bad about the current elected leader of any legislative assembly or parliament. At the end of the day, the fault-finding comes down to what’s wrong with the system and how democracy isn’t functioning how it should. However, when speculating all the problems it never really bottles down to what the people can do to strengthen the system and bring change to it. Just as it is the responsibility of the elected leader to provide for the people of the country, we need the people to do our job and correct the leader by making sure he represents the right things and this can be done so by selecting the right candidate.

The right to vote is one of the few pillars of democracy. Therefore it is important that one must vote if he is able to and contribute to the country. A citizen shouldn’t find a reason as to not vote as it must be a compulsive duty and must come from within. Citizens of the country constantly complain about how our political climate is bad and worsening day by day and the honest truth is we have a chance to change it for the better.

To make these changes we must vote by taking an informed vote and casting it as you should remember every vote counts. I personally believe that everyone should vote as everyone has a different opinion and in our Indian democracy we have the ability to choose who can preside over in the office, this also gives us an opportunity to have a say in this political world.

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• Tuesday, July 16, 2024
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The Student Newspaper of Washington College since 1930

Should voting be made mandatory in the United States?

By Alaina Perdon

Elm Staff Writer

As Americans, we are privileged to live in a society in which we have the right to decide our country’s political course by casting our vote. Yet, our nation continually faces the issue of low voter turnout, meaning not every community’s voice is well-represented. Mandating voter participation could solve this disparity, ensuring equal opportunities for representation.

The 2020 presidential election saw record-breaking voter turnout; the United States Elections Project reports that almost 150 million people cast a ballot. But this election was a historical outlier.

During the 2014 midterm elections, national voter turnout rates were at their lowest levels since 1942, with less than 37% of the eligible population making it to the polls, according to U.S. Elections Project reports. More striking, voter turnout can be as low as 4% when municipalities hold special elections.

To ensure an effective democracy in which politicians represent the interests of all citizens, it is essential that as much of the population votes as possible. When there is low voter turnout, a small percentage of the population can end up controlling major political decisions. U.S. Censusing data shows these fortunate individuals most often reside in predominantly white, wealthy communities.

“Voting access is the key to equality in our democracy,” former U.S. house representative John Lewis said. “The size of your wallet, the number on your zip code shouldn’t matter. The action of government affects every American so every citizen should have an equal voice.”

Poor voter turnout cannot simply be attributed to inaction on the part of the individual. While the poll taxes and literacy tests of early-1900s America are behind us, voter suppression is still a reality plaguing minority communities.

A joint investigation by Public Religion Research Institute and  The Atlantic found twice as many Black and Hispanic individuals were incorrectly told they were not listed on voter rolls at the polls during the 2016 presidential election compared to their white counterparts. Similarly, twice as many minority voters reported difficulty finding a polling place in reasonable distance from their homes, a statistic further supported from research by NBC indicating that frequent changes to polling-site locations hurt minority voters more than white voters.

“It would be transformative if everybody voted,” former President Barack Obama said in a March 2015 public address. “The people who tend not to vote are young, they’re lower income, they’re skewed more heavily toward immigrant groups and minorities.”

It should already be the responsibility of the federal government to ensure all citizens have reasonable access to a polling location, an efficient voter registration process, and other election resources; however, the U.S. has clearly failed its citizens in these respects. The barriers placed to curb minority votes are an obstruction of democracy, benefitting only the fortunate few while marginalized communities continue to go underrepresented.

Mandatory voting, or civic duty voting, would eliminate some of these barriers, allowing fair representation of currently marginalized communities.

“Casting a ballot in countries with civic duty voting is often easier than it is in the United States. Registering to vote is a straightforward and accessible process, if not automatic; requesting a ballot or finding your polling place typically does not require calls to your local supervisor of elections or constantly checking online resources to ensure that your polling location has not changed,” Brookings Institute research analyst Amber Herrle said in a proposal for a nationwide voting mandate.

Civic duty voting shifts responsibility from the voter to the state, forcing the government to provide these necessary resources to its citizens. After adopting a civic duty approach to voting, Australia began using mobile polling facilities in hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, and remote Aboriginal communities to ensure that those who are unable to get to a polling location can still vote, according to a 2015 report by FairVote researcher Nina Jaffe-Geffner.

Prior to Australia’s implementation of mandatory voting, the voter rate had reached a low of 47% of registered voters, according to Jaffe-Geffner. Once voting was legally mandated, turnout rates increased, with over 80% of the eligible population participating in the last election.

One of the major arguments given by those against compulsory voting is that it leads to a greater number of uninformed voters.  Roll Call columnist and stringent advocate for mandatory voting Norman Ornstein notes that, “those who choose not to vote are generally less educated on political issues.”

While uninformed voting is a valid concern, Ornstein argues this would incentivize federally regulated political outreach and education, making all citizens more politically informed.

Implementing mandatory voting may not be a feasible change for the U.S. without years of planning, but facing in that direction, even on a municipality level, would begin a positive shift in U.S. voter turnout.

To uphold our democracy, the U.S. should consider changing policies to make voting easier and more accessible for everyone. More voters at the polls means fair representation of every demographic, guaranteeing actual liberty and justice for all. 

Featured Photo caption: With countries like Australia enforcing mandatory voting laws, many wonder if similar policies should be enforced in the United States. Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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Voting in the United States Should be Required by Law

The voting system in the United States provides registered voters options to voting in the national election. Days before the Election Day it is impossible to know who will be the president, but the certainty of voter turnout remains abysmal and the results depend on the number of voters practicing their constitutional right. Reforms by the United States government could increase the turnout but the most appropriate way would make voting mandatory by law.

Making voting a requirement by the law would make elections valid since it protects the integrity of elections. Republicans provide rationale to the cynical restrictive identification of voter ID in Pennsylvania but the integrity of elections shown with the eligibility of voters. Having the voter identification would temper polarization of politics. Currently, in United States the electorate has partisan believers over-represented in the voting process while the moderates and independents claim to be under-represented in the voting process. If all the registered voters voted, politicians would go to places where they would get the most votes. This would make them responsive to the poor, less educated and young Americans who rarely vote.

Mandatory voting would make American keen on their choices during voting. Americans often lament after making choices based on civic knowledge as they focus on the supply of information more that facts. Making voting mandatory by law makes Americans demand for better leaders. The move of making voting mandatory by law motivates voters to learn what they represented through voting.

Many arguments arise against mandatory voting in the United States, though they all lack reflection on democracy. Increasing uninformed voters will decrease policymaking. This presumes that policymaking in the U.S. provides a higher mark of enlightenment. It assumes that the non-voters are stupid and do not understand the essence of elections. The idea of mandatory voting in America is unclear since most Americans think that it cannot work yet going to school, taxpaying, the jury and the draft are madatory. The drafting of the constitution was not about the right to be let alone, but also the right to represent America in decision-making. It is vital for Americans to practice liberty. Liberty is the process of electing representatives that voice public issues. This is why making voting mandatory in America has nothing to do with politics.

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How to Write an Argumentative Essay | Examples & Tips

Published on July 24, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

An argumentative essay expresses an extended argument for a particular thesis statement . The author takes a clearly defined stance on their subject and builds up an evidence-based case for it.

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Table of contents

When do you write an argumentative essay, approaches to argumentative essays, introducing your argument, the body: developing your argument, concluding your argument, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about argumentative essays.

You might be assigned an argumentative essay as a writing exercise in high school or in a composition class. The prompt will often ask you to argue for one of two positions, and may include terms like “argue” or “argument.” It will frequently take the form of a question.

The prompt may also be more open-ended in terms of the possible arguments you could make.

Argumentative writing at college level

At university, the vast majority of essays or papers you write will involve some form of argumentation. For example, both rhetorical analysis and literary analysis essays involve making arguments about texts.

In this context, you won’t necessarily be told to write an argumentative essay—but making an evidence-based argument is an essential goal of most academic writing, and this should be your default approach unless you’re told otherwise.

Examples of argumentative essay prompts

At a university level, all the prompts below imply an argumentative essay as the appropriate response.

Your research should lead you to develop a specific position on the topic. The essay then argues for that position and aims to convince the reader by presenting your evidence, evaluation and analysis.

• Don’t just list all the effects you can think of.
• Do develop a focused argument about the overall effect and why it matters, backed up by evidence from sources.
• Don’t just provide a selection of data on the measures’ effectiveness.
• Do build up your own argument about which kinds of measures have been most or least effective, and why.
• Don’t just analyze a random selection of doppelgänger characters.
• Do form an argument about specific texts, comparing and contrasting how they express their thematic concerns through doppelgänger characters.

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An argumentative essay should be objective in its approach; your arguments should rely on logic and evidence, not on exaggeration or appeals to emotion.

There are many possible approaches to argumentative essays, but there are two common models that can help you start outlining your arguments: The Toulmin model and the Rogerian model.

Toulmin arguments

The Toulmin model consists of four steps, which may be repeated as many times as necessary for the argument:

• Make a claim
• Provide the grounds (evidence) for the claim
• Explain the warrant (how the grounds support the claim)
• Discuss possible rebuttals to the claim, identifying the limits of the argument and showing that you have considered alternative perspectives

The Toulmin model is a common approach in academic essays. You don’t have to use these specific terms (grounds, warrants, rebuttals), but establishing a clear connection between your claims and the evidence supporting them is crucial in an argumentative essay.

Say you’re making an argument about the effectiveness of workplace anti-discrimination measures. You might:

• Claim that unconscious bias training does not have the desired results, and resources would be better spent on other approaches
• Cite data to support your claim
• Explain how the data indicates that the method is ineffective
• Anticipate objections to your claim based on other data, indicating whether these objections are valid, and if not, why not.

Rogerian arguments

The Rogerian model also consists of four steps you might repeat throughout your essay:

• Discuss what the opposing position gets right and why people might hold this position
• Highlight the problems with this position
• Present your own position , showing how it addresses these problems
• Suggest a possible compromise —what elements of your position would proponents of the opposing position benefit from adopting?

This model builds up a clear picture of both sides of an argument and seeks a compromise. It is particularly useful when people tend to disagree strongly on the issue discussed, allowing you to approach opposing arguments in good faith.

Say you want to argue that the internet has had a positive impact on education. You might:

• Acknowledge that students rely too much on websites like Wikipedia
• Argue that teachers view Wikipedia as more unreliable than it really is
• Suggest that Wikipedia’s system of citations can actually teach students about referencing
• Suggest critical engagement with Wikipedia as a possible assignment for teachers who are skeptical of its usefulness.

You don’t necessarily have to pick one of these models—you may even use elements of both in different parts of your essay—but it’s worth considering them if you struggle to structure your arguments.

Regardless of which approach you take, your essay should always be structured using an introduction , a body , and a conclusion .

Like other academic essays, an argumentative essay begins with an introduction . The introduction serves to capture the reader’s interest, provide background information, present your thesis statement , and (in longer essays) to summarize the structure of the body.

Hover over different parts of the example below to see how a typical introduction works.

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts is on the rise, and its role in learning is hotly debated. For many teachers who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its critical benefits for students and educators—as a uniquely comprehensive and accessible information source; a means of exposure to and engagement with different perspectives; and a highly flexible learning environment.

The body of an argumentative essay is where you develop your arguments in detail. Here you’ll present evidence, analysis, and reasoning to convince the reader that your thesis statement is true.

In the standard five-paragraph format for short essays, the body takes up three of your five paragraphs. In longer essays, it will be more paragraphs, and might be divided into sections with headings.

Each paragraph covers its own topic, introduced with a topic sentence . Each of these topics must contribute to your overall argument; don’t include irrelevant information.

This example paragraph takes a Rogerian approach: It first acknowledges the merits of the opposing position and then highlights problems with that position.

Hover over different parts of the example to see how a body paragraph is constructed.

A common frustration for teachers is students’ use of Wikipedia as a source in their writing. Its prevalence among students is not exaggerated; a survey found that the vast majority of the students surveyed used Wikipedia (Head & Eisenberg, 2010). An article in The Guardian stresses a common objection to its use: “a reliance on Wikipedia can discourage students from engaging with genuine academic writing” (Coomer, 2013). Teachers are clearly not mistaken in viewing Wikipedia usage as ubiquitous among their students; but the claim that it discourages engagement with academic sources requires further investigation. This point is treated as self-evident by many teachers, but Wikipedia itself explicitly encourages students to look into other sources. Its articles often provide references to academic publications and include warning notes where citations are missing; the site’s own guidelines for research make clear that it should be used as a starting point, emphasizing that users should always “read the references and check whether they really do support what the article says” (“Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia,” 2020). Indeed, for many students, Wikipedia is their first encounter with the concepts of citation and referencing. The use of Wikipedia therefore has a positive side that merits deeper consideration than it often receives.

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An argumentative essay ends with a conclusion that summarizes and reflects on the arguments made in the body.

No new arguments or evidence appear here, but in longer essays you may discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your argument and suggest topics for future research. In all conclusions, you should stress the relevance and importance of your argument.

Hover over the following example to see the typical elements of a conclusion.

The internet has had a major positive impact on the world of education; occasional pitfalls aside, its value is evident in numerous applications. The future of teaching lies in the possibilities the internet opens up for communication, research, and interactivity. As the popularity of distance learning shows, students value the flexibility and accessibility offered by digital education, and educators should fully embrace these advantages. The internet’s dangers, real and imaginary, have been documented exhaustively by skeptics, but the internet is here to stay; it is time to focus seriously on its potential for good.

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An argumentative essay tends to be a longer essay involving independent research, and aims to make an original argument about a topic. Its thesis statement makes a contentious claim that must be supported in an objective, evidence-based way.

An expository essay also aims to be objective, but it doesn’t have to make an original argument. Rather, it aims to explain something (e.g., a process or idea) in a clear, concise way. Expository essays are often shorter assignments and rely less on research.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

The majority of the essays written at university are some sort of argumentative essay . Unless otherwise specified, you can assume that the goal of any essay you’re asked to write is argumentative: To convince the reader of your position using evidence and reasoning.

In composition classes you might be given assignments that specifically test your ability to write an argumentative essay. Look out for prompts including instructions like “argue,” “assess,” or “discuss” to see if this is the goal.

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Home — Essay Samples — Government & Politics — Voting — Should the Voting Age Be Lowered to 16

Should The Voting Age Be Lowered to 16

• Categories: Voting

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Words: 544 |

Published: Sep 5, 2023

Words: 544 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Arguments in favor of lowering the voting age, concerns about lowering the voting age, comparisons with other age-related rights.

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‘We need a new nominee’: George Clooney calls on Biden to step aside after seeing him at fundraiser

Actor George Clooney published a guest essay in The New York Times on Wednesday calling for Democratic leaders to coalesce behind a new presidential nominee amid mounting pressure from within the party for President Joe Biden to withdraw from the race.

Clooney, a major Democratic fundraiser, issued his call as prominent Democrats continue to step forward to question Biden’s ability to win re-election against former President Donald Trump following the president’s debate performance last month.

“It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “ big F-ing deal ” Biden of 2010,” Clooney wrote. “He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”

NBC News has reached out to the Biden campaign for comment.

Amid Democratic handwringing in the days since the debate, Biden has defied calls to drop out and has dismissed polling broadly showing him trailing Trump in key states, although often within the margin of error.

Democratic donors , meanwhile, have been divided on how to chart a path forward on a nominee amid the dissension. Referring to the debate, Clooney, who called himself friend of Biden, wrote that party leaders “need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw. We’re all so terrified by the prospect of a second Trump term that we’ve opted to ignore every warning sign.”

“We are not going to win in November with this president,” he added. “On top of that, we won’t win the House, and we’re going to lose the Senate. This isn’t only my opinion; this is the opinion of every senator and congress member and governor that I’ve spoken with in private. Every single one, irrespective of what he or she is saying publicly.”

Despite some defections, prominent  Democrats in Congress  have continued to voice support for Biden —  albeit waveringly  — after closed-door meetings following their return to the Capitol this week.

In his essay, Clooney also skewered Biden’s argument in a  letter  to members of Congress that his victory in the Democratic primaries show he has the support of voters.

“It is disingenuous, at best, to argue that Democrats have already spoken with their vote and therefore the nomination is settled and done, when we just received new and upsetting information,” he wrote.

“Top Democrats — Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi — and senators, representatives and other candidates who face losing in November need to ask this president to voluntarily step aside,” he said.

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com .

Elleiana Green is a Digital Politics intern with NBC News

Matt Korade is a politics editor for NBC News.

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Guest Essay

Britain’s Election Is Not the Centrist Triumph It Appears to Be

By Rory Stewart

Mr. Stewart is a former British government minister, the Brady-Johnson professor of grand strategy at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs and the author, most recently, of “How Not to Be a Politician.” He wrote from London.

The British Labour Party has won its largest majority since the founding of the party over a century ago, securing at least 412 of the House of Commons’s 650 seats. And in an age of populism and polarization, it has done so on a moderate, centrist platform.

The new version of Labour — led by Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who served as the head of the Crown Prosecution Service — may seem reassuringly reminiscent of the consensus of the 1990s and early 2000s, when moderate progressives like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were committed to liberal economics, liberal democracy and a liberal global order.

But it is too early to celebrate this election as a triumph of the center. There is no clear sign that British voters are any more enthusiastic than voters anywhere else for the socially liberal, fiscally conservative politics that this incarnation of the Labour Party represents. Voter turnout was near a record low, and while Labour won a remarkable margin of seats, it secured a very low share of the vote in what one commentator dubbed a “loveless landslide.”

At its heart, this election was an emphatic rejection of a chaotic incumbent . The Conservative Party has been reduced to 121 seats, with two seats left to declare, the worst defeat in its 190-year history. It lost vote share not only to Labour and the centrist, pro-European Liberal Democrats, but also to the hard-right, anti-immigrant Reform U.K., led by Nigel Farage , an ally of Donald Trump.

With the far right ascendant and the Conservative Party battered, Britain has entered new political territory. What centrist forces in Britain have earned is not so much a victory as a brief reprieve; how long it lasts depends on how well they use it.

The Conservatives deserved the rebuke they got. They were in power for 14 years, with little to show for it other than a damaging exit from the European Union. After winning by a landslide in 2019, the party burned through three prime ministers, lurching from the feckless populism of Boris Johnson to the reckless 49-day libertarianism of Liz Truss to the uninspiring technocracy of Rishi Sunak .

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