Why I Vote: Democracy is a Verb

For me, democracy is a verb. It only works when people move.

Without action, the definition is nothing more than vocabulary: nice to recite, meaningless in practice. I learned that early, and I remind myself of it every time I step into a voting booth.

On Sunday, November 2, I pulled an all-nighter, leaving Washington, D.C. at 3:30 a.m. to travel home to New Jersey to vote early in the general election. 

I sat on a Greyhound bus for six hours, refreshing updates about the mayoral race in New York City. I watched Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim immigrant, fight an uphill battle against the same forces that once kept Kamala Harris - my very first presidential vote - from becoming president. Even though I wasn't voting for Mamdani, I recognized the feeling. It was the same mix of hope and fear I carried for Harris. And it crept back again as I traveled home to vote for Mikie Sherrill, a woman running in a political climate where identity still shapes electability, and that reality never sits lightly.

The knot in my stomach wasn't about the candidates themselves. It was about knowing how often people's backgrounds become barriers long before ballots are counted. But even with that heaviness, I kept going, because the point of democracy isn't comfort. It's commitment. Commitment to the people who came before us and the ones who will come after. Commitment to building a country worthy of their stories.

By the time I reached my local polling station, cast my ballot to help keep New Jersey blue, and traveled all the way back to D.C., it was 11:55 p.m. My body was exhausted, but I went to bed knowing I had acted, and action is the responsibility that citizenship demands.

Democracy that isn't practiced doesn't protect anyone.

Showing up isn't new for me. I started Brown Kids Read, my nonprofit, when I was thirteen because I believed that children deserved diverse stories and that teens deserved opportunities to lead. Over the years, we've given away free diverse picture books, trained high school students to run book drives in their communities, and shown young people that change is something they can create with their own hands. A book that stays closed doesn't change anyone. Democracy that isn't practiced doesn't protect anyone.

That philosophy shapes the way I show up on TikTok, too. As an honors broadcast journalism major and political science minor at Howard University, I break down HBCU news and U.S. politics on TikTok in ways students can actually understand. I'm tired of hearing young voters described as complacent or confused. It's not that we don't care, it's that no one has bothered to explain the stakes in plain language. I know there are people in power who benefit when young voters stay home. They rely on our silence. They expect our absence. They build their strategies around the assumption that we won't act.

But I refuse to let anyone count me out of this democracy.

So yes, I vote. I vote even when I'm exhausted. I vote even when past elections have left me heartbroken. I vote even when the process feels heavy, imperfect, or discouraging. I vote because my activism means nothing if I don't participate in the system I'm trying to influence. I vote because the children I read to deserve adults who show up when it matters. I vote because representation, equity, and literacy don't defend themselves. People defend them.

Democracy is not a feeling. It's not a slogan. It's not a theory. It's a verb. And verbs require action.

Ssanyu is a junior honors broadcast journalism major and political science minor at Howard University and a member of the NAACP Howard University chapter.