Who is Failing Whom?
Two-and-a-half hours I stand in the cold. I’m wearing nothing but sweatpants and a hoodie and my phone’s battery runs out faster than should be possible. I’m standing in line to vote, but in my head I can’t help but be stuck on a line from Animal Farm. “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.” My phone is about to die and I still have a block-and-a-half of line in front of me before I can cast my ballot. The wind blows and I really wish I had dug out my winter coat.
We all take a step forward.
Leading up to the election, I kept finding myself coming back to those simple, famous words: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Maybe because I’ve had the Hamilton soundtrack stuck in my head for weeks or maybe because in this year, in this election, they ring truer than they have since they were first written.
No phrase is so fundamentally “American” while also being so lost on Americans — and on one generation in particular.
While every young American knows this line from the Declaration of Independence, we have never seen it in reality.
Let me ask an important question. Everyone knows “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” not everyone knows the next part. Do you? It’s this: “…to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” — and this next part is important — “that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”
Now, in the time since the violent insurgence on the US Capitol by Trump supporters, it’s important to understand what these words really mean. No one is above the law. No one rules with impunity. Every two years in this country we abolish the government. We have elections and we vote.
The 2010 census shows that the population of young, working-age Americans (18–44 years old) constitutes 113 million people. The next age group (the one referred to as “Boomers”) is made up of just 81 million people. The 2020 census will likely reflect an even larger gap. Simply put, young people make up a much larger percentage of the population — and at least our fiery rhetoric is grounded in our country’s founding document.
This generation of younger Americans has lived through 9/11, two recessions, major climate disasters every few months, school shootings, and two elections wherein the candidate with the most votes didn’t win the presidency. We are (by average) the highest educated generation in all of American history, and yet we are the most underpaid. We will no longer be silent or participate in politics in the ways dictated by older generations.
The 2018 midterm elections saw the highest youth voter turnout in one hundred years. And, in 2020, 53 percent of all eligible Millennials voted. Joe Biden’s victory was carried by numerous groups, but undeniably comes on the backs of young Americans.
There are two main reasons for the illusion of this generation’s lack of political involvement. Firstly, while the majority of younger Americans who vote tend to vote for Democratic candidates, they do not always register as or identify with one of the country’s two predominant political parties. And, simply put, how could we? Neither one of these parties look anything like us. Regardless of party, the average age of a member of Congress is nearly 58 and the average age of a senator is almost 62. Not to mention the medium net worth is approximately a million dollars. High-level elected officials and voting Millennials grew up in two completely different worlds — two completely different Americas.
We as a generation are turned off by virtue signaling. Here are some of the presidential campaign slogans from the last twenty years: “Believe in America,” “A safer world and a more hopeful America,” “Prosperity and progress,” “America’s truth, America’s promise,” “A future to believe in,” “Fighting for us.” Those are real slogans put out by candidates from both parties — with one exception. I made one of the slogans up — but can you even tell which one it is?
Gloves. I wonder where I put my winter gloves? The line takes a step forward.
“This world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity,” Bobby Kennedy said in 1966.
Throughout American history, the younger generation normally carries the label of “activists,” partly because young people have the energy to fight for change and partly because young people, just graduating from school and entering the “real world,” generally have a uncontaminated perspective on society. While this viewpoint may be naïve, it is pure. Young people’s grasp on the world is based on whatever the older generation led them to believe. When young people first see the truth behind the platitudes they are fed by parents, teachers, and mentors, they often have a “break glass in case of emergency” moment. They start to understand that the “truths” on which they were raised are subjective, thus leading them to begin to form their own system of beliefs. This is the look in the eyes of an eighteen-year-old voting for the first time, realizing that the democracy they were taught about in school is not the democracy they are living in.
Every major moment of social change in this country — from the fight for civil rights to anti-war demonstrations, to protests for climate action, women’s suffrage, and LGBTQIA+ rights — has come about because young people were willing to fight. Never forget that Jefferson, Monroe, and Hamilton were all under the age of thirty five when they created a country and its laws out of thin air.
When we see media footage of peaceful civil disobedience, the onus is on us to ask ourselves, “How did we get here?” When the younger generation is pushed to give voice to their beliefs, it’s on the older generation to listen to that voice.
The second reason for the political disenfranchisement of younger Americans is geographical, not necessarily generational. Younger Americans tend to live in urban areas, and gerrymandering hurts populated areas the most — and the race most severely impacted by gerrymandering in our country is the presidential election because of the Electoral College. There are currently more Millennials living in California than there are people in Sweden.
It is time to eliminate the Electoral College. We have changed it before — it was the 12th Amendment. We almost abolished it entirely in 1969, under Nixon, but the movement was defeated by a Senate filibuster. “One person, one vote.” That is democracy.
The United States, a country that has spent the better part of the last century preaching free and fair elections worldwide, needs to provide this to its own people. Leaders of both major parties need to see the Electoral College for the ticking time bomb that it is; if they don’t, a third party presidential candidate who’s able to turn out a new demographic — who can win California and Texas, or New York and Florida — can send a presidential race to the House. As long as the largest voting block in this country isn’t voting, such a scenario is very possible.
The line moves ever closer to the door. I stand next to the bus stop and watch people get on and off busses, going about their lives.
So who is failing whom? The systematic disenfranchisement of the youth vote is no more than a byproduct of a country with a long history of voter suppression.
Young people move a lot — and voter registration requires an address.
Voter registration isn’t automatic. At eighteen, I was automatically registered for the draft, but not to vote for the leaders of the country for which I would supposedly be fighting for.
Young people work jobs that don’t give paid time off, but elections are held on a weekday because of a decision that was made over one hundred years ago. If election day was a national holiday, young, working people would get a paid day off to go to the polls.
Voting should be the easiest part of living under a democracy — participation in the system is key to a healthy system.
As the line shuffles forward, I rethink my choice to go to the grocery store beforehand. Not because I’m worried about the food going bad — it’s far too cold for that — but simply because my backpack is weighed down with cans of beans (I’m going to make chili for dinner). Then I remember that I am standing in line to vote less than five hundred yards away from where Malcom X was assassinated. The weight of my backpack feels necessary.
Millennials don’t reject politics — they reject the politics of the older generation. They reject the system that has shouted over their voices with a megaphone powered by corrupt money. They reject the wealth that has been made on their backs.
Our political system has been warped over the last thirty years — since the end of the Cold War when advertiser-funded news networks no longer faced an outside threat. They turned inward, looking for an enemy. Red vs. Blue. Cable news did to our parents what they said violent video games would do to us.
And it’s not that Millennials want to return to “normal” — because that “normal” was pretty terrible for most Americans. “Normal” led us in circles for decades. What we want is the original promise: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The opportunity to live on a planet with clean air and water.
Access to jobs, not unpaid internships or minimum wage positions requiring 3+ years of experience.
The freedom to choose who we love.
To make medical decisions without the interference of big insurance companies.
To be able to live without fear simply because others live in fear.
We want to be seen for what we are: the last, best hope for America.
The wind howls as the young woman at the door wearing a mask with “vote” written on the front ushers me inside. I am led through a metal detector into a room full of people — though not as busy as I anticipated. I am pointed to the right table and, through a plexiglass wall, an older woman asks me for my name and address. She verifies my information and hands me a ballot. I walk to the voting area and look down at all my choices across a wide variety of offices and ballot initiatives. Once again I think of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But as I cast my vote, I’m left with the next line: “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” I walk out smiling, but with a sour taste in my mouth.
