Young Voters Need Access
Dear Leading Ladies,
On Sunday, March 3rd, Leading Ladies will have our first appearance at a brewery. We will be at Night Shift in Everett with a table full of materials designed to encourage the young patrons to register to vote and show up at the polls. We of gray and white hair are bringing along some younger souls to give us added credibility.
We go with the knowledge that more young people voted in the last presidential election than ever before, yet we hear there is a good deal of apathy which may be growing, considering these new voters have a choice between two old white men and many are disenchanted with both of them. Nonetheless, the task is worth the effort. Their vote can make a difference, and they need to know that.
The numbers are up, but not enough
According to Spectrum News reporting in December 2023 and referencing a poll conducted by Harvard’s Institute of Politics, “After record youth turnout in the 2020 elections, fewer Americans ages 18 to 29 plan to vote in 2024 in part due to widespread dissatisfaction with both President Joe Biden and his likely challenger former President Donald Trump.”
The poll showed that young Americans “definitely” planning to vote in the upcoming presidential election dropped from 57% to 49%, a significant descent. Another 17% said they will “probably vote” and another 14% said there's a 50-50 chance.
What kind of numbers are we talking about? In the 2024 presidential election, 40.8 million members of Gen Z will be eligible to vote. Gen Z is generally designated as born between 1997 and 2012, which means those eligible to vote are between 18 and 27. That doesn’t include the Millenials, who are now 28-43.
In 2022, there were 161.42 million people of all ages registered to vote in the United States. This is a decrease from the previous election, when 168.31 million people were registered to vote. So this means that eligible voters under 30 make up close to 25% of all eligible voters. Add in those between 30 and 43 and you have a majority of potential voters.
What difference does it make if they vote?
Tufts University’s Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service sees youth voting as a starting point for later civic engagement. “Voting is habitual. Starting to vote earlier in life means more habitual voters over the long term,” the school contends. “Young people are a major subset of the electorate, their voices matter and they have important insight into issues.” Furthermore, voting can “be a gateway to more/other civic engagement.” All of this is true, no doubt, but the biggest selling point to young people, it seems to us, is that their vote can make a difference in their lives and the lives of people they care about.
If all these eligible young voters exercised their right of suffrage, they could have enormous influence and power over policies, legislation, and the very future of our country and the world.
Is it really apathy that keeps them away?
A deeper look reveals a complicated answer.
Even with the larger overall voter turnout and, specifically, youth voter turnout in the elections of 2018, 2020, and 2022, “voters were much older, on average, than nonvoters,” according to Pew Research. “About two-thirds (66%) of the voting-eligible population turned out for the 2020 presidential election – the highest rate for any national election since 1900,” according to Pew Research. “Adults under 50 made up 36% of voters, but 64% of nonvoters.”
Research done by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tisch reveals vast differences among the youth vote –
differences in education, geography, wealth, and more. CIRCLE’s recently published report on how to cultivate voters “introduces and details a new framework for how institutions and communities can prepare young people—starting long before they turn 18—to become active and informed voters.”
They propose that growing the young electorate and, thus, young people’s participation in our democracy, “requires a transformative shift in how we support their development into voters.” The two “foundational problems'' they identified in their research are
“[t]here are profound inequities in access to civic learning and engagement opportunities for young people''and “[t]hese inequities lead to differences in voting rates by race/ethnicity, education, and other factors that prevent us from building a fully representative multi-racial democracy” and
“[t]he current model of bringing young people into the electorate, which relies on short-term mobilization tied to election cycles and overly focuses on ‘likely voters’, is grossly insufficient and further reinforces existing inequities.”
CIRCLE points to statistics such as these below, noting that young people of color, those growing up in rural areas, and those without parents who have gone to college, are least likely to have the access that results in voter registration and voting that their peers of greater means do.
16% of youth aren’t learning about elections in school or through peers
22% of youth didn’t register to vote because they didn’t know how
46% of youth weren’t contacted by any political campaign in the 2020 election
Transportation and availability of polling places was also noted as more problematic for youth of color and those without college experience than other eligible voters.
The CIRCLE researchers conclude that there are “profound layers of inequality” that keep young people of color, particularly, and others from less advantaged homes from registering and voting. “People think it’s apathy, but varying levels of participation is much more about access than apathy,” one CIRCLE researcher commented. The long term structural changes that CIRCLE envisions include engaging young people in the process, exposing all students to civic learning opportunities such as classes about local and national governments where they can discuss their beliefs and politics, working as poll workers in their communities, registering others to vote, etc. Of course, removing barriers so that people can vote by mail, online, or automatically is always helpful for eligible voters of all ages.
Of course, there are voters of means who are apathetic or just don’t think their votes will make a difference. They need to learn otherwise. But, clearly, there is a large group of potential voters who have not been given the same advantages of access to information about how government works, how they can participate, and how they can make a difference by casting their ballots. Read more about what CIRCLE is doing to tackle that issue here and watch a video here.
Drop by Night Shift Brewery in Everett on Sunday, March 3 between 1 and 4 pm! Stickers and buttons for all!
Best,
Therese (she/her/hers)
Judy (she/her/hers)
Didi (she/her/hers)
Leading Ladies Executive Team