Did you or someone you know buy a lottery ticket for the most recent Mega Millions jackpot? The odds are quite high, considering that the lottery sold $5.7 million in Mega Millions tickets in California during the first half of the day the Thursday before the drawing. At the height of sales that day, people were buying 200 tickets per second. The Virginia Lottery projected that sales after Friday’s drawing through Tuesday’s drawing will have approached $19 million, lottery spokeswoman Jennifer Mullen said. At the sales peak, as many as 12,700 tickets will have been sold per minute, she said.

The odds of actually winning the $1.6 billion jackpot? 1 in 302,575,350. But as Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for the Board of Elections said, “Unlike lottery players, everyone who votes is a winner.”

Voting is free, just as easy as going to a store to buy a lottery ticket, and has a guaranteed positive effect. And yet, in North Carolina, there were roughly 867,943 Mega Millions ticket sales on Saturday and Sunday alone, while only 438,429 early ballots had been cast since the polls opened that Wednesday.

We, as voters, have a chance to make a real and significant difference in these midterm elections. And unlike a lottery ticket, which has an extremely small chance of positively affecting your life, a vote will actually make a difference. So if you’re hesitant to vote, if you think that one vote won’t really do anything, think again. Your vote is your voice. If you are upset about anything in our nation, if you want to see change in this country, then you have to vote. Because if you don’t, then you are essentially saying that you don’t care about your country or what happens to it.

We do not know what the future holds, but these midterm elections will most likely be one of the most consequential of the next generation, and the trajectory of life in the U.S. as we know it will drastically change depending on this election. Several major issues will take wildly different courses depending on which party controls Congress—this is no longer a time to be complacent. People must vote.

So vote early. Vote by mail. Go into your polling place on November 6. Vote in the way most convenient to you. Just make sure that you cast your ballot, because now is not the time to do nothing.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

And we cannot let evil triumph.

By: Cianna Allen