Hello, hello, helloo! How are you? I hope you're well.
This post is a little mid-week post. It is about politics and voting and the Bundestagswahl in Germany on September 24th. If you are not interested in this topic, then please come back next weekend, when I'll post "normal" posts again. Nonetheless, I recommend reading this, though you're maybe not from Germany, because it's an important topic.
I wanted to write this post, because voting in elections is really important. I'm not in a political party and I also don't know that much about politics, but nonetheless we should care about it.
1848 was the first time that men were able to vote in Germany. 70 years later it was also the women's turn. Since then there were many elections and millions of people voted.
This year, in a few weeks to be exact, will be the 19th Bundestagswahl, which is the most important election in Germany, since we vote for the next chancellor.
The highest voting turnout a Bundestagswahl ever had, was in 1972 when 91,1% of the Germans voted. After that, less and less people voted and in 2013 only 71,5% did so, which means that approximately 23,5 million people didn't vote.
The question is:
Why don't people vote?
Some people don't agree with political parties, some don't know whom to vote for and a lot of people (especially young people) are not interested in politics or simply don't care about it.
This year 65,5% of the people voted in the election in Nordrhein-Westfalen, which is a bit more than half. Some people said, that this was a good result, because it's more than usual. However, when about half of the people don't feel the need to vote, it's quite a bad result, in my eyes.
Before the election I talked to a few friends about it and one friend said, that she didn't vote, because she didn't care and she also was to lazy to inform herself about the candidates.
2016 was the Brexit referendum. Only 36% of the 18-24 year-olds voted. 64% of them voted for Great Britain to remain in the EU. In the end, 41,1% of the British voted remain and 51,9% voted leave. This is a difference of 1,9%! If every 18-24 year-old had voted, the result could've easily been different. This shows that we should care.
Germany is one of 90 states worldwide that ensures a free and fair elections process, and on September 24th we'll have the next opportunity.
I think voting is a privilege and we should all make use of our right and vote. The Brexit Referendum is the best example to show how much our vote is worth and that it is important to vote and that
it does make a difference!
I hope you're having an amazing week! See you, xx