Since the birth of this nation, the vote has always been suppressed. It began as a privilege allotted to only land-owning males; then it expanded to universal white male suffrage, to male suffrage and eventually expanded to include women as well.

Through all the progress that this country has achieved in the area of inclusion, it seems alarming that one thing has not: the presidential election.

To this day, the election to the highest office in the land remains outside the scope of the proletariat’s control, and no work has been done to bring it out of the mire to which it has been relegated.

Beyond sheer disenfranchisement, the issue runs deeper than not having a direct route to choosing this country’s leader. Not only has the voice of the populace been silenced, but the entire selection process has been appropriated by others, leading to the overwhelming conclusion that your vote does not matter.  

In an ideal sense, the electoral college represents the will of the legislator’s constituency, but legislators have opted out of the tradition of honoring the will of the people four times in the history of this country.

One might say that they normally abide by our decisions, but others might posit that their decision was made far before ours was.

In more recent history, President George W. Bush lost the popular vote by 540,000 votes and by the end of his presidency, held some of the highest disapproval ratings due to unpopular wars and a collapsed economy.

One has to wonder what would have happened should the people have had their way and elected Al Gore.

While 9/11 and the housing crisis were tragedies a long time in the making, the American people should be trusted with their opinion as to how these world-changing events should have been handled.

Alongside the nationalized theft of the people’s choice is the selection process this country uses to select who even gets on the ballot and is represented on the national stage.

Leaked emails between the Democratic Nominee Hillary Clinton’s staff and Democratic National Convention Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz show a questionable relationship concerning publicity and support for the other Democratic candidate, Bernie Sanders, ensuring that the voice of the people is limited to the establishment’s choices for control.

In addition to the two major parties controlling their candidates, the duopoly of the privately-run convention committees have extended the breadth of their control onto the third party stage.

Candidates kept out of the spotlight or kept off of polls stand virtually no chance of any legitimate presence in the national dialogue, and third party candidates represent, by definition, an alternative to the binary the nation has been given by those who control it.

The debate committee arbitrarily decided that a 15 percent polling was required before any sort of invitation to the debate stage, but in many instances, the major polling sites replaced the names of both major third party candidates with a mere ‘other’ option, limiting the access these alternatives have to right and left approaches to solving problems.

The problem of disenfranchisement has become endemic in this nation. With all of the progress made in the area of universal suffrage, the public has continued, almost nefariously and seemingly deliberately, to be outside the scope of our authority.

The powers of the presidency may be limited, but as our ability to choose and establish our voices slips from our grasp, we need to take back the power and authority that’s guaranteed in the Constitution.