You are young and alive. Vote! Peter Sterne tells you how.

If you’re registered to vote in New York, you should receive information in your Lerner (or Altschul if you’re at Barnard) mailbox telling you that you’re registered to vote and where your assigned polling place is located. If you haven’t received any mail from the Board of Elections yet, you should probably call them to figure out what’s up. But if you just want to find out whether you’re registered, you can check online here and then figure out where your polling place is located by typing in your street address here. Like Housing, the Board of Elections likes to assign most Columbians (specifically, those living in Columbia undergraduate housing) to Wien.

Of course, if you’ve decided not to take advantage of going to school in the greatest city in the world, you can apply for an absentee ballot to vote in your home state. The deadline to apply for an absentee ballot varies a bit by state (here’s a handy chart). Once you receive your absentee ballot, you usually have until election day to send it back to your home state.

Finally, if you’re registered to vote in New York but still want the thrill of voting before next Tuesday, it’s possible to vote early. But you have to go to the County Board of Elections downtown (specifically here), and you have to give them a good, compelling reason as to why it’s impossible for you to vote on Election Day. It’s like switching LitHum sections, but even more pointless.

Most importantly, however you decide to vote, make sure that you don’t forget to do it. And if you have any other questions related to voting not answered in this guide, send an email to columbiavotes@gmail.com.