From a young age, I have understood that our greatest civil duty is our ability to choose who is steering the ship that is the United States. I have walked into a myriad of voting booths with my mom or dad, and enjoyed the dopamine rush that comes from pulling the lever and having your vote cast, your voice heard.

In the coming months, with an audience as large as the world, we will be deciding who is to take over the coveted seat in the White House. The pickings on the Republican front seem to be getting slimmer by the day, if they weren’t in the first place.

Among Democrats, however, there are three candidates with robust enthusiasm, knowledge and passion fighting for the job. With arguments substantiated and debates substantive, the Democratic Party is an exciting place to be.

When I walk into the booth on my own for the first time to make a decision as to who I want to sit at the head of the table, I will be voting for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

As someone respected by both her supporters and opponents, the former secretary of state has always been a tour de force. Essentially, it was her qualifications that got me excited. She was the secretary of state, a senator, a first lady.

Her support for women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, equal pay for women, gun control, ending sexual assault on college campuses, disability rights, the American working class and lowering college costs made her a candidate I could get behind. She speaks for the silent and has the power to get things done.

Volunteering at the Hillary Clinton campaign headquarters in Brooklyn this past summer was an experience that opened my eyes to inner workings of a political game-changer’s campaign and to the beauty of American politics. I was able to see how hard-working, loyal and brilliant Clinton really is.

She makes concerted efforts to work for every American, especially those who have been sidelined, on the issues they care about. She gets educated herself when she is unsure and thoroughly does her homework to make informed decisions she can defend with pride. As a feminist, I would be proud to have a woman like the former secretary as the leader of a world that is truly free.

While her main opponent, Bernie Sanders, has been gaining a lot of traction among young people, it’s important that Clinton pushes to be a candidate young people would greet with open arms as their commander-in-chief. Sanders goes after Clinton mainly for the money she has received in the past from big businesses. Clinton’s source of funding is a realistic concern, but one to which Clinton has responded with the utmost poise, certainty and confidence — characteristics that do not even hover near the Republican candidates.

Republicans zealously go after Clinton in the only way that their arguments would have a stand: they attack Clinton for her personality and her past. They go after her for Benghazi, her emails and worst of all, for her husband’s extramarital affairs while he held office. They cannot go after her qualifications, her policy or her accomplishments because she would win that debate.

With her emails in particular, many Republicans have employed a rhetoric that connotes Hillary Clinton with negativity and falsification. The email issue is one that is hard to understand and seems to change by the week. It is an issue to watch, but not one to define a decision.

The Obama administration has made huge strides in the last eight years with health care, education, gay marriage, minimizing wars, opening up dialogue about police brutality and gun violence, among many others. Clinton believes that the progress made on such controversial topics, especially with those on the other side of the aisle, should be built upon rather than gutted and renovated completely, as she believes Sanders is proposing to do.

In contrast, her realistic sense, the result of her experiences in two branches of government, have given her the means to accomplish her goals in Washington and around the world.

So while I’ll be voting for Clinton because I think she will do the most, improve the most and be the most, you should think long and hard about who you’re voting for and why.

Joanna Orland is a freshman newspaper and online journalism major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at jorland@syr.edu.

Published on February 1, 2016 at 12:30 am