Voter Suppression: The Real Reason Young People Don’t Vote

When I saw the registration booth at my school, I immediately pre-registered to vote. I look forward to casting my ballot more than any other privilege of turning eighteen- not that jury duty doesn’t sound thrilling. As a politically-active seventeen-year-old, I believe that the vote is a privilege and a civic duty.

However, it seems that not all of my peers feel the same way. In fact, the US has one of the lowest rates of youth voter turnout in the world. Only 51% of 18 to 24-year-olds were registered to vote in 2016, and only 39% voted in the presidential election that year. Young people of color are least likely to vote, with 46% of white youth reported voting in 2016 as compared to 40% of Black youth, 38% of Asian youth, and 34% of Hispanic youth.

It hasn’t always been this way. During the 19th century, young people were among the most politically engaged Americans. They threw parties to galvanize support for their political party, joined political marching clubs, and considered casting their “virgin vote” at age 21 to be a rite of passage. However, civic engagement among young people fell at the turn of the 20th century, when teen culture shifted from politics to other forms of entertainment and politicians stopped vying for their support.

Then in the 1960s, eighteen to twenty-year-olds began to express outrage at the fact that they were old enough to be drafted to fight in the Vietnam war but couldn’t vote. This gave rise to a national movement to lower the voting age. On July 5, 1971, the Constitution was formally amended to grant 18-year-olds the right to vote. The following year more than half of the 11 million new eligible voters flocked to the polls- a record turnout for youth. However, the young voter turnout steadily declined in the years that followed.

So why don’t today’s young Americans, especially young people of color, vote? Are we uninformed and lazy, or do we simply not care about the future of our country?

The fact is, young people do care, even if we are no longer joining political marching clubs. In 2016, three out of four of 18-to-29-year-olds said they were interested in politics. The problem is voter suppression, not apathy.

Many young Americans attend college away from their home state and thus tend to vote by absentee ballot. This process is especially confusing for first-time (and first-generation) voters. Furthermore, young people are more likely to work multiple jobs with inflexible hours, which makes it harder to wait in long lines at the polls. This is especially an issue for young voters of color since on average, Black and Hispanic voters wait twice as long in line to vote as whites.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle facing young voters is a lack of knowledge about the democratic process. 20% of young people said they don’t think they know enough to be able to vote, and 6% of 18 and 19 years olds who were not registered to vote attributed it to not knowing where or how to register. Schools that serve less wealthy, predominantly minority student bodies are less likely to have the resources to fund strong civics programs, which contributes to the racial disparity in voting.

Many youths don’t think it’s worth jumping through multiple hurdles to vote when they don’t feel heard. They are caught in a catch-22: politicians don’t focus on issues young people care about because they don’t vote; and young people don’t feel empowered to cast a ballot because politicians aren’t talking about issues that are important to them. In 2008 Obama interrupted this vicious cycle by addressing young people’s concerns, causing turnout to spike.

So why does it matter that an entire demographic of voters are turning out to the polls in such low numbers?

A democratic system should represent all citizens. If so many Americans are disenfranchised by bureaucratic obstacles, lack of information, or feeling unheard, then we are failing to live up to this ideal.

Furthermore, if more young Americans exercised their right to vote, politicians would focus on issues we care about, like climate change and student loans. Young people also tend to be more progressive. Trump himself admitted that if a greater percentage of the populace voted, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” We have the power to transform politics if we turn out to the polls in higher numbers. And with the 2020 general presidential election only 50 days away, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

A number of states have introduced reforms that have been shown to increase young voter turnout. These include same-day registration, online and automatic voter registration, pre-registration for 16 and 17-year-olds, and introducing polling stations onto college campuses. High schools should also implement civics programs that educate students about the democratic process and engage them in current events.