Millions skip midterm elections. Here's why voting in midterms shapes your life more than you think—and how to stop making excuses.
Millions of Americans who show up for presidential elections disappear when midterms roll around. Your wife, my wife, probably your friends. And then they complain about everything that's broken.
Here's what most people don't realize: voting in midterms is where real power actually lives. Presidential elections get the hype and the attention. Midterms get ignored. But the people elected in midterms are the ones making decisions about your schools, your local taxes, your job market, and what happens on your streets. They're not sexy. They don't make national news. But they hit your wallet and your daily life way harder than any president ever will.
Last night, I watched this play out in real time. My wife grabbed her ballot and said she wasn't voting this year. Not out of laziness—just felt disconnected from it all. I handed her mine and said cool, your choice. Fifteen minutes later, she pulled out her ballot and started doing research. When I asked what changed, she said something that stuck with me: "I can't complain about how things are run locally if I'm not willing to vote."
That's it. That's the real conversation.
Voting in midterms isn't about being a good citizen or doing your duty. It's about not being a hypocrite. You can't sit on the sidelines, complain about the system, and then act surprised when things don't go your way. That's just noise.
Look, I get it. Midterms feel boring. There's no energy around them. The candidates aren't household names. Your social media feed isn't blowing up about it. So you think it doesn't matter. But that thinking is exactly why the people who *do* show up have so much power. They're not the majority—they're the ones who actually move.
If you're serious about building a better life, about making real change happen, this is where it starts. Not in big grand gestures. In small, unglamorous decisions that compound over time. Voting in midterms is one of them.
Here's what I'm asking you to do: spend 30 minutes this week researching your local candidates. Don't overthink it. Just look up what they actually stand for and what they've actually done. Then make a choice. Whether you vote left, right, or somewhere else doesn't matter to me. What matters is that you actually participate instead of sitting out.
Your voice matters. Not because some motivational poster told you that. But because the people who *do* speak up are the ones shaping what happens next. At Success Scholars, we talk a lot about taking control of your future. This is what that actually looks like in practice.
Stop being one of the millions who sits on the sidelines. Vote in midterms. Then you've earned the right to complain.