On one of the days that I spent registering voters at a local college campus, I encountered at least six people within the hour who were of voting age but still asked me how old one has to be to register to vote. 41% of young adults ages 18-41 who were perfectly eligible to vote during the 2008 presidential election did not get registered. Things like this are definitely not a great sign.
The amount of politically informed people in our society is highly dependent on our culture. There are plenty of people whom I have spoken with when going door-to-door telling me that they did not know who the candidate I was there for was, yet they had a strong position either for or against him based on his political party affiliation. Unable to pass up the opportunity to gain some insight on their thought process, I would ask the voter why they were voting straight Democrat or straight Republican down the ballot, and there were definitely some alarming responses. Many told me, with brute honesty, that it was because they had just always done it or their parents had voted that way and therefore they never bothered to differ in opinion. It was as simple as that.
In my first blog post, The Problem with Elections and Voter Turnout, I addressed the fact that only a shocking 36.5% of registered voters had voted in this year’s midterm election. I am convinced that our politically pessimistic culture is partly to blame for creating an environment where people think so lowly of politics (or they just don’t think about politics at all) that they don’t do their civic duty and vote.
So that was a bit of a long, ranty, introduction. Here’s where I get to what the purpose as the solution to this problem for the future.
We need to educate kids about the importance of being knowledgeable about politics. I’m not talking about the political science and government classes that many high schools offer either, I’m talking about making students realize for themselves how we all play a role in our Democracy. A bit of inspiration is all we need to turn apathy into willing involvement. That’s something that is often overlooked in traditional courses not designed to do much more than force feeding us information about government that we later regurgitate onto tests.
It was about a year ago when an AP Comparative government teacher whom the students at my school are particularly fond of organized a campaign fair at my high school where several local candidates spoke about their policies and recruited volunteers. Deciding to sign up for our Democratic Congressman’s campaign for reelection with one of my friends for shits and giggles was such a trivial choice at the time, but looking back at it now, it was definitely the beginning of an entirely changed life for me that I wouldn’t trade for the world. Before this, I didn’t know the first thing about politics, let alone the intricacies of a representative’s policies. After interning for about five months, I now have realized how important it is for young people to learn more about the people representing our values and to get out the vote.
Those of us (kids) who learn early on will go on to contribute to society by being as informed as we can be, and also to spread what we know with other voters who may not have had the opportunity to learn about how we can help the Democratic process. Only then can we make sustainable change in the voter turnout rate for the better and increase the number of voters making well-informed political decisions.
We Are Our Change 