Rachel Maddow explained without exaggeration or rhetorical flourish how your vote could save America and place a check on Trump.

Read: Samuel Alito Is The Insurrectionist Threat To Democracy On The Supreme Court

Maddow said:

In every dark moment in American democracy, and we are in a dark moment right now, the vote is the way out. That’s the — it sounds simple. It sounds reductive. But that is the bargain you make as a democratic society. Democracy can be a frustrating system. It can be very inefficient. Lots of problems can arise in democratic societies. But in a democracy, the solution to all of our problems no matter how dark things get is always to vote in a way that will change things, always. Electing to be a democratic society means we agree that we will use this one tool as a country to make things better when they need to be made better.

And it is frustrating, but that’s what democracy is. It’s a self-governing philosophy. It tells us that’s the one tool you get to fix things, so it’s the one tool you use. And if you decide to give up on that tool and pursue things through other means, other more direct means, you’re doing a lot of things, but you’re not participating in the democratic way of life that we have chosen as a country. And so with next week’s election, if the vote shows that the country has elected to go in a very different direction than the way we are going right now, it’s not like that will make us a fundamentally different country, right? It won’t be a spiritual change.

We will still be the people who we are today. But if we make that change as a country a week from tonight, it will have a practical effect. If there is behavior by this White House and by this administration that you think might reasonably be checked or corrected, or if need be reined in by another branch of government, that is what could happen, depending on next week’s vote and how it goes that is the chance that’s afforded by this election.

That’s the chance afforded to you when you go to vote for who you think should represent your district in Congress and who you think should be your Senator. That’s the choice you get to make. A lot of — there is a lot of lofty rhetoric, right, when you get to be one week around the election, especially at a time when things are going in ways that are so scary in this country. But get practical about this. What’s the one thing you can change? You can change whether or not the administration has a check over it or doesn’t. By how you vote for your member of Congress.

Video:

Rachel Maddow Is Right. Your Vote Is The One Way To Bring Change

There is only one certain way to bring change in a democracy, and that is by voting. Change is the central question in every election. Do you like the way things are going, or do you want to make a change? The American people don’t like a lot of the ways that things are going. Usually, the change question is focused on the economy, but in this election, the areas of change are weightier and more cultural. They involve questions like should pre-existing conditions be covered by your health insurance? Is your government listening to you? Is it time to send a message about Trump’s conduct, rhetoric, and corruption? Does the current federal government represent you?

These are all bigger questions that the pocketbook politics that conventional wisdom suggests drives electoral decisions.

If you believe that this country needs to be saved from these dark times, your ballot is your tool, and voting is the mechanism for change.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association