Amongst the chaos of life, there are very few times when you actually make an immediate change in the world. Not everyone can a be a bleeding-heart humanitarian. Some people have other responsibilities. A lot of students attend college to get good jobs so they can support their families. They can’t dedicate themselves to their community by being social workers. People who do work can’t afford to give a large part of their income to charities. But voting is one of few times you can make an immediate difference.

Now every election is said to be important, but this election will go down as one of the most important of the 21st century. Not to beat a dead horse, but this is the first time we have some real “special” candidates. We have a black, a female, a Mormon and one of the living dead. Besides the candidates, the environment our next president will be entering will be especially volatile.

Whether you rock the blue donkey or the red elephant, you can’t deny there are some universal issues on the tips of everyone’s tongues. Health care is something everyone is talking about.

The system has some definite flaws. The next four years will give America its chance to catch up to other modern nations and make major reforms.

Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, there is a solution that fits your ideology.

We could implement some form of universal coverage that is deducted from everyone’s taxes.

For those of you who saw Michael Moore’s documentary “Sicko,” you might see this idea as very appealing and plausible.

There are others who think people should decide if they want to purchase health care and get to choose their coverage.

A way of doing this would be to give people more money by lowering taxes or giving rebates (wait, didn’t we already try this?). Either way, your future health is riding on Tuesday’s vote.

Besides the debate over health care, the Iraq war is still being waged. That entire region is very hostile. The hot-headed child that is Iran will undeniably be the biggest challenge for the next leader of the free world.

The relationship between the United States and that unstable regime could further complicate our mission in Iraq and influence our foreign policy for decades.

Illegal immigration will directly affect our lives. The policy enacted by the next president will affect our economy, our culture and even future elections. Such a large introduction of one ethnic group into our population will have a major influence on future elections. How does the slogan “Elect Pablo Gonzales in 2012” sound to you?

As you can see there are a multitude of issues that need to be addressed. All of which matter.

This is the one time a year where you get to voice your opinion and use it to supplement all of the time and money you couldn’t spend on fixing the world. Sean “Diddy” Combs stated last presidential election that if you don’t vote you could possibly die.

Besides the fact that he used this marketing scheme to help promote his reality-TV-show-based music group Da Band, there were some major flaws with this statement.

There is no denying that the next president will make some tough decisions, and their results will be very visible during our lifetime. But you really won’t die if you don’t vote, you’ll just live terribly.

Paul is a junior in computer and political science and will be wearing his “I voted” sticker with pride.