Election day is just one week away. I'm sure many of you, like me, are ready for this election season to be over. For more than a year we've been hammered, badgered, and generally harangued with the idea of how important it is to vote. However, it has been my experience that the reasons given for our participation in the election process was more about getting their candidate election, or more often preventing their opponent from winning, than what actually makes voting so important. So as the day of reckoning for this crazy election cycle approaches, let's take some time and look at the importance of voting without all of the political party rhetoric.