COVID-19 Has Promoted Civic Participation
Millennials have been known for “socially distancing” before 2020 made it cool. If you need any evidence, just look at what Amazon did to the brick-and-mortar retailers. In a world of always being working and on-the-go, the convenience of not having to go to a physical retailer is preferred by most consumers. This, like many things was amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, much to the delight of Amazon’s shareholders.
In this new world, everything from shopping, work, and school has shifted to a virtual format. With the digitalization of the world, it was inevitable that civic engagement would be next. During the 2020 election cycle, the percentage of mail-in/absentee ballots more than doubled from the year prior.
While the pandemic played a major role for the increase in absentee/main-in ballots, a majority of voters saw it as the most convenient way to vote. This added convenience resulted in a voter turn out of 66.7% of the voting-eligible population.
Absentee voting is not a new concept, it has been around for almost 150 years. It was originally created as a way to allow military personnel to vote. At the moment, 34 states allow individuals to use an absentee ballots without providing a valid excuse. While Georgia has recently implemented more restrictive voter registration laws, the hope is that the backlash they’ve received will cause them to be the exception and not the norm.
This increased civic participation will only continue to increase as the voting system continues its progression into even more convenient formats, namely online voting. While it is clear that online voting is the inevitable future, current online voting technology is not secure enough for widespread usage (Specter & Halderman, 2020).
This increased participation will not be isolated to just presidential elections, but should affect all levels of government, including at the municipal level. As a result of the pandemic, many municipalities have already switched planning board and mayor & council meetings into a online format. No longer will residents have to rush home from work and head to the town hall. They can now participate from the comfort of their homes, which will promote increased attendance.
This also extends to the the younger generation, which has been notoriously bad when it comes to voter engagement. In this new age of connectivity, youth voters (ages 18–29) are more engaged in politics, and believe that their voices matter.
However, this is where a troubling trend emerges. Not everyone feels as comfortable voicing their opinions and concerns, particularly certain minorities. Everyone has their own story and life experiences which shape their political belief system. In this new digital age, people are acquiring more of their information from online. It’s hard to sympathize with others and understand an issue if you can only hear it from your own perspective, which is what is happens when not everyone gets their voice heard.
In this new digital age, most aspects of life are becoming easier, including civic participation. We need to make sure that we don’t lose a part of the conversation in the process, because voting is power, and elections have consequences. Therefore, we need to make sure that the voices of everyone are heard and their best interests represented in these decisions.
Works Cited
Belle Booth, R., Tombaugh, E., Kiesa, A., Lundberg, K., Cohen, A. 2020. “Young People Turn to Online Political Engagement During COVID-19”. https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/young-people-turn-online-political-engagement-during-covid-19
O’Neill, Aaron. 2021. “Voting populations and number of votes cast in U.S. presidential elections from 1824 to 2020”. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1139763/number-votes-cast-us-presidential-elections/
Pew Research Center. 2020. “The voting experience in 2020”. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/11/20/the-voting-experience-in-2020/
Specter, M., & Halderman, J. 2020. “Security analysis of the democracy live online voting system”. https://internetpolicy.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/OmniBallot-1.pdf
Stewart, Charles. 2020. “How We Voted in 2020: A First Look at the Survey of the Performance of American Elections.”, MIT Election Data + Science Lab. http://electionlab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2020-12/How-we-voted-in-2020-v01.pdf
