Josephine Ricardo
With the political season heating up, the continually disappointing rate of youth participation at the polls should not be ignored.Teen voting has been on the decline since the 60s. According to Rock a Vote in 1964, 50.9 percent of teens voted. Two years later, in 1996, only 32.4 percent of voters between ages 18 to 24 made it to the polls. When charismatic politicians appear such as President Obama, they can win over the vote of young people. Barack Obama would not have been elected in 2008 and 2012 had it not been for remarkably high youth turnout in his favour. In 2008 the voting rates had been the highest it has ever been where there was a total of 22,385(44.3%) teen voters.
Thom File, a sociologist in the U.S. Census Bureau’s Education and Social Stratification Branch, recently argued that the declining number of votes is a result of increases in the non-citizen population. On the other hand, D.K., a publisher from The Economist, offers that young people have begun to feel that they don’t have a say in what goes on in the political world. People who have yet to settle down are not as focused on how political decisions affect them and their transient lifestyles can also make it difficult to vote. Furthermore, many young people do not feel that there is a need for them to vote.
During most elections it is simpler to win over the older generations who vote no matter what. When charismatic politicians do appear, they can persuade the young to vote for them. Young people tend to be more cosmopolitan and liberal than their elders. They also tend to be turned off by the negativity and cynicism of election campaigns. People who have not settled down are also not so greatly affected by political decisions and their lifestyles can sometimes make it difficult to vote. Trying to settle down makes it very difficult due to the cost of housing in certain locations. This makes registering to vote a chore which is easily forgotten until it is too late.
For the first time ever, in Takoma Park the election age was lowered to 16 for local elections. Out of the 134 teens that registered, 59 actually cast ballots, a turnout of 44 percent. People have speculated that allowing kids to begin voting while they are in high school will get them in the habit of voting when they are older. However, in order to make this true, we have to get high school students interested in voting. One step would be for at least one state to open up voting for all offices to high school students. Also, going door-to-door, working the phone lines or social media, or by volunteering at candidate events would get these high school students involved. Even though some of the younger voters will be ignorant voters, many of 20 and 40 and 80 year old voters pay little attention to public affairs. Also, the younger voters will be influenced by family members, just like all voters are influenced. We want citizens to vote, therefore it would make more sense to have them start getting interested in voting at an even younger age and then getting them to vote at a younger age such as 16. By doing this, it is creating a better way to spread democracy.
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