Your chance to blog here, is there anything that can/or should be done to Rock (you young people to) The Vote?"
Ann Beeson in the NY Times said this about the trending youth apathy.
"In 2008, as a candidate, Obama dazzled the nation with his ability to inspire millions, including loads of young people, to get involved in political organizing for the first time. And they reached their goal – they elected Obama. Problem was, it was the wrong goal. The party ended, and many were disillusioned when change didn’t happen overnight. Voting is critical, but it is just one step in the broad spectrum of engagement required to advance real change, whatever your goals and ideology. For democracy to flourish, we need people to do it all — vote, volunteer and raise some righteous hell."
Scared Straight — Into the Voting Booth
7 comments:
The 2008 election was considered the return of young adult voters, so Obama supporters are hoping that young people will again turn up. The reason that has been hypothesied as to why young adults don't vote it that in a sense they are still children. People aged 18-29 tend to not fall into the categories that classify a typical voter: money, marraige, and homeownership. Also among the people aged 18-29 who are in the workforce, 44% are either unemployed or underemployed. With all this, it may just be that young adults are not mature enough to enter into the voting world just yet.
I don't know if its a lack of maturity People don't understand that our government affects us. I also think that a lot of young adults are so busy with school and their new jobs that they don't see voting as a priority.
I agree with Cameron. Many people, especially teenagers, are busy with jobs, college, school, etc. They don't consider voting important because they don't know the effect it can have in the election. One vote can change the game and if people knew that, they'd put in that extra effort to vote.
Even though one vote can change the election, people don't physically see the change happening no matter who the candidate is so it creates a "what's the point?" atmosphere.
Parker N
I feel like the current political climate is giving off that idea that our votes don't count. I mean, what does it matter if we get a president for our party in the white house if the congress isn't going to pass any of his agenda. To me it feels like this: no matter who I vote for they are not going to be able to get done what I want them to because of all bickering that hides the real issues(i.e. "BREAKING NEWS! Is so and so a communitst!"). It's just all very discouraging.
Obviously, voters are influenced by the candidates, and it seems that the younger generation of voters have very mixed feelings regarding the candidates, resulting in an indecisiveness or a lack of a want to vote. In addition to this, there definitely is a "what's the point" atmosphere, as Dale said, as one vote couldn't possibly make such a great difference. It seems that, even though the younger generation may cast a vote, they never get a President who completely represents what they stand for.
Finally, going off of what Cameron and Rashi said, given the fact that the younger generation is still in school, this results in an pushing the idea of voting to the back burner. We really don't have time to follow along with the policies and campaign promises of Presidential candidates, and make our decisions off of ten minutes of watching the news.
I think letting younger people know that a lot of political topics are actually highly relevant to their current lives would bring more young adults to vote. I feel like a lot of young people think that many of the issues covered in politics don't really affect their lives very much (social security, welfare, taxes, etc.), so they don't feel as compelled to go vote.
However, there are issues that come up in presidential debates and platforms like employment issues and especially the topic of college debts/student loans that are central in the lives of many young people today, and I think if they were more aware of this, they would be more inclined to vote and take part in making a decision about their own futures.
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