The Young People Have to Vote in November

There is no shortage of topics that I could discuss on this week�s blog. There was a special election last night for a state senate seat in Columbia. There was another batch of primaries that also happened last night. There is a lot to break down with the whole Omarosa-Trump feud that is currently going on. There is an injustice happening to a group of student protesters in Bangladesh right now. There was a trading of tariffs between the United States and Turkey earlier this week. I could go on.

            But this is my last article (except for something coming on Friday) and I don�t want the last thing I write on here to be about something unimportant in the long run. In two weeks, the Omarosa story will be forgotten, partly because the collective attention span of the American people is tiny and partly because something equally absurd will arise from the Trump administration that will clog up our media outlets for a few days before it gets flushed down only for it to happen again and again.

            So, I�m going to use this final article to talk about something that has been and will be my focus for a long time, increasing voter turnout among young people. When I talk about the subject to a group or in conversation I always start by saying, �Young people don�t vote like the old people do.�

            That is a simple way of saying that millennials (specifically 18-29-year olds) typically turn out to vote 20% less than the baby boomers in presidential elections. Millennials vote even less in midterm elections. In 2014 only 19.9% of eligible voters in that same age range cast their ballots. Baby boomers, on the other hand, consistently turnout at rates between 60% and 70%. The thing is, there are now more millennials eligible to vote than baby boomers and that gap will continue to widen because, cynically, the baby boomers are not getting any younger.

            Millennials are now technically the largest voting block in America, but they do not act or dare I say vote like it. At the current rate, it will take a few decades for them to actually become the largest voting block in America. That current rate has the potential to change this year. There is an energy that I have not been able to quantify around this upcoming election among many young people. As a millennial/ Gen Zer I have witnessed this energy on the front lines. The reason for this energy: young people are the ones pushing for young people to get involved and vote.

            This push has been led by the student survivors of the Parkland school shooting who have become activists for gun reform. Equally as emphasized in their messaging is the need for young people to turn out in November and they have spent the past few months traveling around the country registering young people to vote. Rather than their parent�s generation telling them that they need to vote, the millennials are encouraging their own to do it.

I had the opportunity to be on a panel with some of the student activists from Parkland last month during their stop in Charleston.

            Hopefully enough young people will be energized by this movement to make a dent in the midterm elections. There are a few reasons why this needs to happen. If you are a young person who is not registered to vote and you are reading this, consider these reasons and then register to vote right here.

1.     Voting is not a right, it is an obligation. People have fought and died for the right to vote for women and minorities in America. By not voting, their efforts were for nothing.

2.     No matter how hopeless and bleak the American political system may look, it certainly won�t get better if everybody that is frustrated by it just walks away. That will allow for a minority of people to control who has power over everybody.

3.     By not voting you are voluntarily not giving yourself representation in our democracy.

4.     As somebody who has interacted with lawmakers to try and get certain pieces of legislation passed, there is a level of condescension directed at our generation. When we try to work with them they see us as a miniscule political force. If a lot more of us vote, I guarantee they will take us more seriously because they will be forced to listen to us because we will have power. We don�t get to earn a seat at the table. We have to take it.

5.     It�s not hard. There�s a misconception that registering to vote and voting is a complicated process. It takes less than two minutes to register and it shouldn�t take more than half an hour to vote on election day.

6.     Voter suppression is a very real thing. Our lawmakers wouldn�t try to take away your vote if it wasn�t powerful.

So that�s all I�ve got to say about that. I don�t expect this one article to cause a seismic shift in voter turnout which is why I have and will continue to invest a lot of my time into voter registration. I encourage you to do so also.

It feels strange writing on the blog for the last time. I�ve been thinking about what I was going to write for this article for a while and in theory I wanted to cinematically end this thing with some profoundly uplifting message, perfectly written and peppered with details that somehow tie every aspect of my blog into one essay made up of roughly a thousand words.

That did not happen here because this is not a finality, it is a transition. There is no grand �The End� to this because politics is something that is defined by its continuity and is something that you cannot put a bow on and proclaim that it is finished. The issue of affordable healthcare did not disappear after the Affordable Care Act was passed. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not end racial discrimination. And Roe v. Wade did not end the abortion debate. These were all landmark moments, but they did not bring an end to the issues they addressed.

So, there will be no climactic ending to the blog. Thank you once again to everybody who has ever read my blog and/or subscribed to it. This has been a learning experience for me and has taught me how to maintain something for a long period of time. Whether you have been reading since the beginning or you started reading somewhere along the way, it means a lot to me. With that said, that�s all for this week.