Your Kids Want to See You Vote
On November 6, 1984, my mom drove me to the local fire station, led me to a voting booth, and picked up my six-year-old self so I could turn the lever for Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up,” she told me. “They are definitely going to lose. But we come here and do this anyway. We always vote.”
That was neither the first nor the last time my mom took me with her to our polling place, but it’s the Election Day I remember most vividly. Maybe the notion of a female vice president plays a role in that. I think the reason is simpler, though: it’s the moment I began to think of myself as a future voter.
I have not missed an opportunity to vote since I turned eighteen. From presidential elections to municipal primaries, whether the races are close or the results are a foregone conclusion, I am there. I got an absentee ballot while studying abroad in an odd-numbered year, just so I could vote for village board. Like my mom said, we always vote.
But most of us don’t. The United States consistently has low voter turnout compared to most other developed countries, even in presidential election years. 2018 saw record high turnout for a midterm election year . . . with just over half of voting-age citizens participating. And in areas where local elections are held separately from congressional and presidential elections, voter turnout is typically abysmal, with less than a third of eligible voters casting a ballot in most major cities (and single-digit turnout in some).
While it’s common to decry low voter participation rates among young adults, many of my former classmates and colleagues — well-educated professionals in their forties — admit to being occasional voters. Some vote only in presidential elections because they find local races uninteresting; others vote mostly in local races, rationalizing that their vote for president matters little in a non-swing state but that their voice can make a difference at the local level. I know people who voted in a primary for the first time in 2016 — some twenty years after they first became eligible to vote.
These people are not lazy. They are actively engaged in their communities in other respects. The difference between their voting habits and mine is simple: I was raised to understand and value the voting process from an early age, while some of my friends grew up in families that found politics an impolite topic to discuss, and others were left out of such conversations on the grounds that voting was for grown-ups.
The thing is, kids don’t remain kids forever. They are future grown-ups — future voters. And if you’re assuming someone else will teach your kids how to be voters, you might need to reconsider your expectations. Depending on where you live, your kids’ school may or may not offer even a basic civics class. And even if your state does require high school students to take a civics class and/or exam, there is a meaningful difference between learning about elections in theoretical terms and seeing a loved one vote in real life.
So how do you raise a future voter? Whether you’re the parent or guardian of a young child or a teen, it’s neither too early nor too late to take a page out of my mom’s book. If you are not currently eligible to vote, consider asking a relative or family friend to talk with you and your kids about what voting is like. And if you are eligible to vote, let your kids have a peek into the process.
If you are fortunate enough to have the option of voting by mail in this election, have your kids sit down with you while you fill out your ballot. Tell them which candidates you’re voting for and why. Let them ask questions about the candidates or the voting process.
If you will be voting in person and don’t want to bring your kids with you during a pandemic — totally understandable! — talk with them afterward about where and how you voted. Show them a generic sample ballot; as the election gets closer, you’ll be able to find them in your local paper or your state or county election board’s website. Pique their interest so they’ll be looking forward to joining you at your polling place the next time it’s safe to do so.
One way or another, take the opportunity to discuss voting with your kids. Let them see that it’s a privilege and a right, but — to the extent that it’s age-appropriate for your child, of course — don’t gloss over the moments when making your selection is difficult. After all, like anything worth doing, voting isn’t always easy! If there are two or more voters in your household, acknowledge that you might vote for the same candidate in one race but have a difference of opinion in another. Tell them about how you’ve voted in the past: a candidate for whom you’re proud to have voted, or a vote you regret, or an election you wish you hadn’t skipped.
In these last few weeks leading up to the election, you have the opportunity to impart an invaluable lesson to your kids. Give them the chance to discover that election results don’t just emerge from thin air; they’re determined by people like you and me — and, someday, them. However you go about it, and no matter the outcome for your preferred candidates, you’ll have scored a big win: raising a knowledgeable and enthusiastic future voter.
