Don’t disenfranchise yourself! Get out there and vote!

Logan Martinez watches as his mother, Renee Martinez, votes during early voting at the Galleria at Sunset mall in Henderson Saturday, Oct. 18, 2014. (Sam Morris/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

If you haven’t heard an admonition to vote by now, you must be living under a rock.

Early voting has been underway since Oct. 18, and thus far, 15.3 percent of all registered voters have voted early, by mail or by absentee ballot. There are three days left before early voting wraps up.

By the way, that’s 15.3 percent of active registered voters.

Of the 2.7 million residents in Nevada, there are roughly 1.8 million eligible voters (people age 18 and older who are citizens). Of those, 1.2 million have actually bothered to register and show up for elections. They’re called active voters.

And of that group, 186,390 have shown up to vote so far this election.

That means, if the polls shut down right now, exactly 6.9 percent of all the eligible voters in Nevada would have decided for the rest of the state’s population who’s going to run the government and the courts for the next two, four or six years.

C’mon, Nevada. We can do much better than that.

If you’re one of the nearly 650,000 eligible people who have not registered, there’s nothing you can do. You’ve got to sit this one out.

But if you’re registered, you have a moral and civic obligation to study the issues and the candidates, get to the polls (either during the remaining three days of early voting, or on Tuesday, which is Election Day) and vote!

There are people out there who will tell you if you don’t know the issues, or if you haven’t studied up on the candidates, just stay home. Don’t cancel out an informed person’s vote with an ignorant one, they’ll say.

Don’t listen to that diabolical nonsense. Anybody who would tell you not to vote — for any reason — does not have your best interests at heart. They want to disenfranchise you in the worst way imaginable: by having you snuff out your own voice.

Voting is your right, but it’s also your obligation. Do not let evil people take your voice away. Ask yourself, why would such a person not want you to vote? Is it because they fear what might happen if every single eligible person registered, turned out and voted in our elections? And why would they be afraid of that?

Elections belong to those who show up. And that’s why I’m encouraging every single eligible voter, regardless of party, gender, age, philosophy, race or creed, to study the issues and vote!

I’m not encouraging voting in ignorance. I wouldn’t recommend a straight party-line vote (there are good candidates in both major parties, and some in third parties, too). But I absolutely refuse to accept the idea that we would ever discourage any person from voting, for any reason.

If you’re not registered, get registered.

If you’re not an active voter, become one.

If you haven’t studied the issues, or the candidates, do it!

And then get out and vote.

It’s not like there aren’t resources. The Review-Journal has written about the higher-profile races, and the newspaper has published an election tabloid with information about every race inside. VegasPBS has hosted debates (co-moderated by yours truly) in seven top races, all of which are archived on the station’s website. My colleague Jon Ralston has hosted debates on his KSNV-TV, Channel 3 program, “Ralston Reports.” Both newspapers have published their endorsements (and, in the case of the Review-Journal, at least, those endorsements are based on interviews conducted by editorial writers Glenn Cook and Patrick Everson with more than 200 candidates, from governor all the way down the ballot). The Review-Journal has the results of its judicial survey online, too.

The information is there. All it takes is a willingness and commitment to do the hard work of being a citizen.

A Facebook friend joked recently that she was surprised that voters weren’t rushing out to study the judicial candidates before going to the polls. I replied that I’d save my sarcasm for the day that same voter was outraged by a bad court ruling, or a skewed vote in a legislative committee, or a bad call by a constitutional officer.

How could this happen? It can happen because good people didn’t take the time to be good citizens.

So don’t listen to anybody who tells you not to vote.

Instead, get educated, go to the polls, and exercise your voice. Every eligible voter, in every election, every time.

Steve Sebelius is a Las Vegas Review-Journal political columnist who blogs at SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at 702-387-5276 or ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.