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Burden has said that the number 1 reason for not voting is not knowing who the candidates are, or not liking them, or actively disliking them

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When a 16 year old goes to get their license at the DMV, have them added to a list so that as soon as they turn 18, they are automatically added to the registration poll

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A Bernie Sanders supporter. PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP/Getty

As Democrats consider how to claw their way back to power, or at least relevance, they have to take a hard look at an untapped resource: young people. Millennials, who tend to be more progressive than their forebears, make up almost a third of the voting population, but in the 2016 election only half of eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 29 cast their ballot.

That represents a problem, but also an incredible opportunity. Though the conventional wisdom is that young people don't vote, when they do it can swing the fate of entire nations. In the most recent UK election, 66 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds voted, helping the Labour Party, led by the left-wing Jeremy Corbyn, win a surprising number of seats. That sort of result would undoubtedly be great news for the Democrats. As the party contemplates how to win back voters who flipped from Barack Obama to Donald Trump, it should also focus on how to win the support of young people who have never voted.

But there are lots of reasons young people don't vote-including a concerted effort on the right to make it harder for them (and people of color, among other populations) to cast ballots. To better understand how Democrats could get young people to the polls, and the problems standing in their way, I called up my friend Sean McElwee, an analyst at Demos and Demos Action, a left-leaning think tank*. Here's what we talked about:

VICE: Is it true that young people don't vote in the US? Why not?
Sean McElwee: Across OECD countries, there are no countries in which younger people regularly turn out at a higher rate than older folks. However, the United States is uniquely high in the age gap, in the top three nations. The majority of Americans do not vote in the first presidential election in which they're eligible. In the 2014 midterm election, there was around 17 percent turnout from 18-24-year-olds.

What are the causes of that? There are both structural factors and campaign factors. In the United States, the biggest structural factor is voter registration. The way that I like to illustrate this is that the registration rate for individuals 18-24 is lower than the turnout rate for older people. Even if everyone who's registered to vote who's 18-24 turned out, they'd still have a lower turnout rate than older folks. What we should do to improve registration? If you go to the DMV when you're 16, you should be added to a list so that as soon as you turn 18 you're going to be added to the registration rolls. The reason that makes a lot of sense is if you are 16, you're probably not going to get your license renewed until a couple years after you turn 18. So, that's one thing we can do: We can make it automatic. Anytime you go to the DMV, you're registered to vote.

Another thing we can do is get rid of the registration barriers with same-day registration, which would allow you to vote at your polling location. Most states have registration deadlines that are four or so weeks outside the election. Four weeks is a long time away from the election, and within the four-week deadline is when a lot of people are like, Oh, there's an election coming up, I should start making plans.

Do the Democrats underestimate the structural suppression imbedded in our voting system?
In very blue states like New York, you do not have any effort to push through same-day registration or automatic registration. Many blue states don't have automatic voter registration. One blue state in particular, Delaware, still disenfranchises some felons for life. Democrats have rightfully taken aim at [opposing] new mechanisms of suppression that have come up in recent years, things like voter ID.

Long term, there haven't been concerted efforts to remove registration barriers, even at times like after the 2008 elections, when Democrats had a lot of power at the state level and could've invested energy in automatic voter registration or increasing the implementation of already existing laws. The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), passed in 1993, requires the DMV and government offices that provide public assistance to give people the opportunity to register to vote. What Demos has found and what other research has found is that these laws are enforced differently, depending on the state. Partisanship plays some role in that, but it's also that states just haven't taken the mantle up to make it easy and accessible to register at the DMV. That's a huge problem because one-fourth of people are registered at the DMV.

How do you think Democrats can mobilize young people?
An example that comes to mind is you had Jeremy Corbyn speaking at a music festival. How often do you hear of that? Politicians don't invest a lot of time in targeting young people with messages. Parties don't invest a lot of time in trying to run young candidates, which is shown to increase youth turnout.

It's worth noting that when campaigns [choose which voters to target], they buy the voter file from the secretary of state, [which doesn't include] people who are not registered to vote. Lots of young people are essentially invisible to campaigns because they're not registered to vote, meaning they're not in any of these databases, and campaigns don't make a lot of effort to target them.

"There's far too much effort by policy makers to design legislation that benefits middle-age folks and older folks who are more likely to turn out to vote."

Aside from automatic voter registration, are there any other reforms that Democrats could focus on to increase voter turnout generally? Like felon disenfranchisement?
Reforms that focus on registration, same-day, pre-registration, or automatic, are the ones that I like to focus on. Felon disenfranchisement is also very key; those are the top priorities from my perspective. There are lots of other convenience voting reforms that have been discussed, things like expanding early voting. Those are all important and great-what they tend to do is make it easier for people who were planning to vote to vote. They don't do as much to reduce the deep stratification of the electorate. I think all those reforms are very useful but should be complemented with easier registration.

Is streamlining the voter registration process the solution to increasing young voter turnout?
Yes, but there are factors that are even more deeply structural, like how many young people live in cities where their vote doesn't matter as much because of gerrymandering and the Electoral College. We should really think of these things as deeply undemocratic barriers to voting. There's far too much effort by policy makers to design legislation that benefits middle-age folks and older folks who are more likely to turn out to vote, and that further depresses the interest of young people in politics.

We need to both change the structural factors, but we also need to have politicians who take seriously the next generation and take seriously their concerns, which gets ignored in presidential elections. If you have presidential debates where you're talking about the national debt but not global warming, these debates inherently alienate young people who don't really care that much about the national debt, but do care quite a bit about climate change.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Correction 7/14: This article has been updated to better reflect Sean McElwee's title and role at Demos.
Follow Eve Peyser on Twitter.

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A Bernie Sanders supporter. PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP/Getty As Democrats consider how to claw their way back to power, or at least relevance, they have to take a hard look at an untapped resource: young people.

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Shaming millennial's for not voting almost always never works. If you are going to ask or talk to a millennial about voting, you have to make sure your tone of voice doesn't sound insulting or rude

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Opinion | Here's how to convince reluctant millennials to vote on Election Day

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Today, a portion of Americans will vote in the most contested and emotionally charged midterm elections that many of us have witnessed. But the crucial word there is "portion," because statistically speaking, Americans don't usually vote en masse. And there's one demographic in particular that has routinely underperformed at the ballot box on Election Day: millennials.

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"You have to convince them that you understand where they're coming from"

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Opinion | Here's how to convince reluctant millennials to vote on Election Day

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Today, a portion of Americans will vote in the most contested and emotionally charged midterm elections that many of us have witnessed. But the crucial word there is "portion," because statistically speaking, Americans don't usually vote en masse. And there's one demographic in particular that has routinely underperformed at the ballot box on Election Day: millennials.

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When young people learn the voting process, it is more likely for them to vote when they are older

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Youth Voting Historically | The Youth Vote in 2018 | The Youth Vote in 2016 | Why Youth Voting Matters | What Affects Youth Voting | What Works in Getting Youth to Vote | Resources
Youth Voting Historically The Youth Vote in 2018

Explore our 2018 Election Center for all of our 2018 data and analysis

According to our initial, post-election estimate, approximately 50% of eligible young people-about 24 million youth, ages 18-29-voted in the 2016 general election. That's a similar turnout rate to the one we calculated in 2012.

55% of young people voted for Hillary Clinton, while 37% supported Donald Trump. The remaining 8% of youth voted for a third-party candidate or did not cast a ballot for president. There were significant differences in youth vote choice by race, gender, educational attainment, and other factors.

The youth electorate was as diverse as the general youth population, and as the youth electorate in recent elections: 61% White, 15% African-American, 17% Latino, 5% Asian-American, and 3% other.

Read our Full Analysis of Young Voters in the 2016 General Election Why Youth Voting Matters

Voting is habit-forming: when young people learn the voting process and vote they are more likely to do so when they are older. If individuals have been motivated to get to the polls once, they are more likely to return. So, getting young people to vote early could be key to raising a new generation of voters.

Young people are a major subset of the electorate and their voices matter:
46 million young people, ages 18-29, are eligible to vote, while 39 million seniors are eligible to vote

Young people (ages 18-29) make up 21% of the voting eligible population in the U.S.

Young people's participation can influence election results.

Involving young people in election-related learning, activities and discussion can have an impact on the young person's household, increasing the likelihood that others in the household will vote. In immigrant communities, young voters may be easier to reach, are more likely to speak English (cutting down translation costs), and may be the most effective messengers within their communities.

And there are major differences in voter turnout among youth subgroups, which may persist as these youth get older if the gaps are not reduced.
What Affects Youth Voting

Contact! Young people who are contacted by an organization or a campaign are more likely to vote. Additionally, those who discuss an election are more likely to vote in it.

Young people who are registered to vote turn out in high numbers, very close to the rate of older voters. In the 2008 election, 84% of those youth 18-29 who were registered to vote actually cast a ballot. Youth voter registration rates are much lower than older age groups' rates, and as a result, guiding youth through the registration process is one potential step to closing the age-related voting gap.

Having information about how, when and where to vote can help young people be and feel prepared to vote as well as reduce any level of intimidation they may feel.

A state's laws related to voter registration and voting can have an impact on youth voter turnout. Seven out of the top 10 youth turnout states had some of the more ambitious measures, including Election Day registration, voting by mail (Oregon), or not requiring registration to vote (North Dakota).

In 2008, on average, 59% of young Americans whose home state offered Election Day Registration voted; nine percentage points higher than those who did not live in EDR states. For more on state voting laws see: " Easier Voting Methods Boost Youth Turnout"; How Postregistration Laws Affect the Turnout of Registrants; State Voting Laws and State Election Law Reform and Youth Voter Turnout .

Civic education opportunities in school have been shown to increase the likelihood that a young person will vote. These opportunities range from social studies classes to simulations of democratic processes and discussion of current issues. Unfortunately, many youth do not have these civic education opportunities, as research has shown that those in more white and/or more affluent schools are more likely to have these opportunities.

A young person's home environment can have a large impact on their engagement. Youth who live in a place where members of their household are engaged and vote are more likely to do so themselves.

What Works in Getting Youth to Vote

Registration is sometimes a larger hurdle than the act of voting itself. Thus showing young people where to get reliable information on registration is helpful.

Personalized and interactive contact counts. The most effective way of getting a new voter is the in-person door-knock by a peer; the least effective is an automated phone call.

The medium is more important than the message. Partisan and nonpartisan, negative and positive messages seem to work about the same. The important factor is the degree to which the contact is personalized.

Canvassing costs $11 to $14 per new vote, followed closely by phone banks at $10 to $25 per new vote. Robocalls mobilize so few voters that they cost $275 per new vote. (These costs are figured per vote that would not be cast without the mobilizing effort).

Resources
A voter turnout time series for 1972-2012 (Excel spreadsheet)
Fact Sheets: 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2010 2009 2004 2003 For more information on youth voting:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Youth Voting Historically | The Youth Vote in 2018 | The Youth Vote in 2016 | Why Youth Voting Matters | What Affects Youth Voting | What Works in Getting Youth to Vote | Resources Youth Voting Historically The Youth Vote in 2018 Explore our 2018 Election Center for all of our 2018 data and analysis According to our initial, post-election estimate, approximately 50% of eligible young people-about 24 million youth, ages 18-29-voted in the 2016 general election.

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Young People Aren't Being Taught About Voting

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Young People Aren't Being Taught About Voting

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Young people aren't being taught the importance of voting in schools. They are not being informed of the voting process or how they should make their voting decisions. Schools tend to stray away from politics, which doesn't inform the students on voting or encourage them to.

https://today.duke.edu/2018/10/why-so-many-young-people-don%E2%80%99t-vote

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Young people are not being encouraged to vote by their friends, families, or organizations, and are not being informed on voting enough to make them want to / feel like they should.

https://ysa.org/4-reasons-young-people-dont-vote-and-what-to-do-about-it/

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Young people share why they arent going to vote

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Young people share why they arent going to vote

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-Didnt want to make a vote for someone that they werent positive about because they didnt want to  put someone in office if they werent sure if they would help
-Doesnt think their vote matters
-Too busy
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More than half of American adults plan to cast ballots in November, but only a third of people ages 18 to 29 say they will. Here, 12 young adults on why they probably won't vote. (See also: Many reasons why you really, really should.)

Samantha | Age 22 | Old Bridge, New Jersey | Last Voted: 2016

2016 was such a disillusioning experience. Going into the election, I was so proud to be in this country at this moment, so proud to be voting for Hillary Clinton. I had my Clinton sweatshirt on all day. I was on Twitter telling people that if they didn't vote they were dead to me - like the whole thing. Watching the results come in, it was just disheartening. My faith in the whole system was crushed pretty quickly. That was the first general election I could vote in, too.

Those actual full-progressive candidates make me optimistic. But there's still a lot of powerful people, especially in the Democratic Party, that are centrists, and that's just a little frustrating when it comes time to stand up to this president and the policies he's trying to pass. Like the Kavanaugh thing - I get that they're the minority and that was an uphill battle, but I just feel like there wasn't a big enough fight put up to that, and I think there continues to not be a big enough fight.

Full disclosure: I have a ballot sitting at home. In 2016, I voted absentee and I just marked off "Send me a mail-in ballot for every election." I don't really get that argument that it's really hard. Like, it's not that hard.

I think there's a way to be an informed nonvoter. I'd rather have an informed nonvoter than an uninformed voter going in and making a choice they don't understand. You're voting for a politician going into office, and I'm seeing less change there than I am through grassroots organizing. Since Trump's been elected, those grassroots groups have really been doing great, great work. So I guess it's that: where you're seeing the impact.

Reese | Age 23 | Hudson, Ohio | Has Never Voted

In my senior year in high school, I was probably borderline socialist. Though I don't really think I understood what a socialist was. I was blatantly liberal and didn't bother to check myself. My friend gave me The Prince, by Machiavelli. I read that, and it provided a certain nuance that I didn't have. From there, I read more, and I realized that a lot of things I'd thought before were wrong. I got into Hellenism. I read Cicero, Livy. Later on, I got into Voltaire. Then, in college, my field is American politics and political science. I prefer constitutional law and Alexander Hamilton.

There are things that I'm aware of where I'm certain I'm right. But for most things, although I feel strongly, it's very probable that there's some aspect of this that I don't understand. Somebody provides a new avenue of thought, and it changes the way I think about something. I never felt certain enough to vote. But I'm a political-science student, and the talk of voting is really big in my circle of friends. In 2016, I almost did. Of course, I'm not a big fan of Trump, but I didn't know if Trump was going to be a flash in the pan or - I just didn't know what to do. I didn't want to help something that might end up being wrong.

Tim | Age 27 | Austin, Texas | Has Never Voted

I tried to register for the 2016 election, but it was beyond the deadline by the time I tried to do it. I hate mailing stuff; it gives me anxiety. I don't remember seeing voter-registration drives, no. I've seen a lot more the past two years. I'm sure there must have been stuff. I just don't remember it.

I guess I still thought, Okay, my vote is largely symbolic in this election because I'm in Texas. Even if Texas went blue, I'm pretty sure my vote wouldn't matter anyway. Austin is very liberal, but it's very gerrymandered.
The House district I'm in goes GOP every election, which is ridiculous. I was particularly interested in voting in 2016 because Donald Trump is so stupid. It drove me up a wall - he knew way less about the government than I do.

I have ADHD, and it makes it hard for me to do certain tasks where the payoff is far off in the future or abstract. I don't find it intrinsically motivational. The amount of work logically isn't that much: Fill out a form, mail it, go to a specific place on a specific day. But those kind of tasks can be hard for me to do if I'm not enthusiastic about it. That's kind of a problem with social attitudes around, you know, "It's your civic duty to vote." I once told a co-worker I didn't vote, and she said, "That's really irresponsible," in this judgmental voice. You can't build a policy around calling people irresponsible. You need to make people enthusiastic and engaged.

After 2016, a couple friends became a lot more politically active, and they helped me register and mail the form. So I actually am registered now. I'm leaning toward probably voting in the midterms. It feels like the reason to vote is symbolic. The motivation isn't about the actual value my vote has; it's more like a theoretical signaling value. If that's the case, I would rather signal that Democrats should have more progressive candidates, rather than assuming that everyone on the left will automatically vote for the candidates they run. In the end, whether I vote probably depends on how close the candidates are.

Megan | Age 29 | San Francisco, California | Last Voted: 2014

I rent and move around quite a bit, and when I try to get absentee ballots, they need me to print out a form and mail it to them no more than 30 days before the election but also no less than seven days before the election. Typically, I check way before that time, then forget to check again, or just
say "Fuck it" because I don't own a printer or stamps anyway. It's incredibly difficult for hourly workers or young people who are in rotational programs or travel frequently for their careers to vote. I wish every state's rules were the same so there was not so much confusion and it was easy to find straightforward information on how exactly to get absentee ballots.

Drew | Age 21 | Berkeley, California | Last Voted: 2016

I feel like the Democratic Party doesn't really stand for the things I believe in anymore. Why should I vote for a party that doesn't really do anything for me as a voter? Millennials don't vote because a lot of politicians are appealing to older voters. We deserve politicians that are willing to do stuff for our future instead of catering to people who will not be here for our future. I'm a poli-sci major, so talking about politics is a daily thing for me. Half of the people I talk to seem very into voting. The other half are people who, like me, don't really feel represented. The only thing they choose to vote in is local elections.

Laura | Age 21 | Orlando, Florida | Has Never Voted

In high school, I didn't even know our vice-president's name was Joe Biden. All my high-school classmates were Republicans. They were very vocal about it, especially during the whole Romney-and-Obama election. I realized I didn't believe everything they were saying. Then I Googled "Republican versus Democrat," and I like kinda both, kinda not. That's why I'm an Independent. It wasn't till the Trump-versus-Hillary election that I realized how important it is to vote. Maybe it had to do with, like, society and all. Everyone I was following was like, "Go out to vote." I was in college in Massachusetts. I decided that I wasn't gonna go through that long process for an out-of-state student to register to vote. I had a hectic schedule. I just didn't have the time and energy. Also I didn't know how my parents would feel about that whole thing, 'cause my brother does not vote either. So it wasn't asked if they could help us out with the registration and mailing all the forms to us. My mom is a Republican, my dad is a Democrat, and I did not learn that until the 2016 election, after begging them to tell me at least what their party was.

I realized that I should've voted afterward. Ever since that election,
I started turning on not just CNN but also Fox News on the iPhone news app. I plan to vote in 2020. I have a goal set to know more about politics by that time.

Aaron | Age 25 | Atlanta, Georgia | Last Voted: 2016

I volunteered for Bernie Sanders. I went to many rallies, I was at the first presidential debate in Las Vegas. But when he folded, then immediately went and defended Hillary, a person who he's been campaigning against for 18 months, that just really killed it for me. I just have no respect for that. It's the same thing on the other side. Look at Ted Cruz, who's spent his last two years being made fun of by Donald Trump, and then we see Trump saying Cruz is the right guy in Texas to go against Beto O'Rourke. It's just so much political theater, and it really just turned me off entirely.

I wasn't planning to vote in 2016. I was with my mom, we were at Albertsons grocery store around the corner from my house, and they were in there voting. My mom voted, and it took her literally ten seconds. She said, "You should do it," and I said, "I don't know, I don't really think I want to." And she was like, "Aaron, it just took a minute." So I said, "Okay, fine." I just voted for Hillary. I felt bad about it for two years.

I look at it this way: That report just came out the other day about global warming, talking about how we have 12 years, until 2030, for this radical change unlike the world has ever seen. And The Hill newspaper just put out that article about how the DNC does not plan on making climate change a big part of their platform, even still. I just do not understand why I would vote for a party that doesn't care about me in any way. They can say, "Sure, we'll lower student interest rates." Well, I don't give a shit about student interest rates if I'm not going to live past 13 more years on this planet. Everyone on Twitter can be like, "Oh, we need the Democratic Senate to pack the courts." But have they watched the Democratic Party at any time during my lifetime? They have not done anything. Like, they don't stand for anything. And I just don't see the point anymore.

There are people that are exciting. Bernie was exciting, Cynthia [Nixon] was exciting, and Alexandria [Ocasio-Cortez] is exciting. So would I vote in the future? I don't know. If somebody came along that was exciting like that? Yeah. Probably.

Anna | Age 21 | New York, New York | Has Never Voted

I'm trying to register in my hometown of Austin, Texas. It's such a tedious process to even get registered in Texas, let alone vote as an absentee. There's no notification service about the status of my voter registration. There's a small, outdated website where you can enter your information and check. When I was at the post office to register, this poor girl, clearly also a college student like me, didn't know what "postmarked" meant and had no idea how to send an important document by mail. Most people my age have zero need to go to the post office and may have never stepped into one before. Honestly, if someone had the forms printed for me and was willing to deal with the post office, I'd be much more inclined to vote.

Thomas | Age 28 | New York, New York | Last Voted: September 2018, New York Democratic Primary

I vote when I feel like I have to. But I mostly consider it something that sucks a lot of people's time and energy away from actually building power with the people around them.

New York especially has a pretty vibrant tenant-organizing scene. You see organizing around community gardens, around people protesting new development going in, people working against rezoning. Regardless of the outcome of those things, I think people leave with a sense of empowerment. You might have failed this fight, but now you know your neighbor. Now you have a whole network you can call up the next time this happens. But if you lose an election, or the candidate you're pushing loses, then what do you have after that? You have this kind of despair for the next two or four or whatever years.

If we get to a blue wave in the midterms and then things just continue on, people will feel deflated and check out. Which is why I think you've got to have something besides just strategic voting, or people resigning themselves to a candidate they don't love but who is at least a Democrat.

In 2008, I was extremely enthusiastic to vote for Barack Obama. But over the years, I started to understand the electoral system as exactly how I've characterized it. For a while, I thought it was an immoral act to vote. It means that we're giving our approval to a system that I totally do not want to validate. Over the years, I've started to think maybe we don't have to frame this so much as an individual act with these moral consequences and that I need to stop being so dramatic about it. So, for instance, I voted for Cynthia Nixon in the primary recently. I teach at CUNY. Insofar as she was in a position where she could have been elected and made a difference in this, yes, I'll take the five minutes out of my day to go vote. But it's not something that we should, as a society, be making the horizon of our political organizing.

My polling place is at the end of my block. It takes no time at all; it's an extremely easy process. But I think that's also what makes it seem sort of alienating and anticlimactic. You go in and you're like, "This is the climax of democracy," like, the sticker on my chest is the climax of democracy.

Jocelyn | Age 27 | Arlington, Massachusetts | Last Voted: 2016

It was easier to get my medical-marijuana card - not a right, or even federally legal - than it was to register to vote. Massachusetts had online registration but only if you have a DMV-issued ID. I don't drive, so I was like, okay, I can register in person, but I'm also dealing with a chronic illness. Every day is a guessing game: Am I going to feel up to doing anything today? I put it off. The week before the deadline, I ended up being really sick and I wasn't able to leave home. You can send in your registration by mail, but I didn't have stamps. I kept thinking that I shouldn't have to jump through this many hoops to register. Back in July, I'd gotten a medical-marijuana card to treat my chronic illness. The entire thing is done online - it's the same requirements as registering to vote.

Maria | Age 26 | Conway, Arkansas | Last Voted: 2012

Growing up, going to Catholic school, everything we learned had a skew on it. Whenever we were taught about voting or political issues, it was not about learning the issues and matching what you feel personally, it was, "This is what the Catholic Church teaches, and this is how you should vote or you're wrong." I think that shaped me to hate politics and not want to be involved.

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12 Young People on Why They Probably Won't Vote

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Only a third of Americans ages 18 to 29 say they will cast a ballot next month in the 2018 Midterms. Here, we ask why.

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They dont vote because they arent properly prepared

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They dont vote because they arent properly prepared

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¨High school civics classes are not adequately preparing youth to understand the basic skills they need for the voting process.´

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If Taylor Swift's admonition to vote doesn't move the needle among young Americans this year, researchers at Duke can help explain why.

Students in a Bass Connections project are researching why so many young voters, even those who say they're politically motivated, often fail to turn out at the polls.

"It's always been pathetic," says Sunshine Hillygus, a political scientist at Duke who studies voter behavior and co-leads the Bass Connections project.

In 1972, the first year 18- to 20-year-olds were allowed to vote, 55 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds cast ballots. Only 43 percent of that age group voted in 2016 and just 16 percent turned out to vote in 2014.

Turnout among young voters is typically 20-30 percentage points lower than among older citizens. And youth turnout has never matched that of 1972, Hillygus says.

The low turnout among 18- to 29-year-olds has puzzled political scientists for decades. The Bass Connections project aims to both understand and find those missing pieces that can bolster the youth vote.
The Bass Connections Project
Specifically, this team is studying how reforming two key areas may help improve voter turnout among young people -- the education system and election administration.

The team is examining a mix of longitudinal student surveys, school administrative records and voter registration files, and testing the effects of voter registration and mobilization interventions developed by the team.

They are studying why only some electoral reforms work to mobilize young citizens, which may help reconcile what are often conflicting results in election sciences literature, Hillygus says.

The team is also continuing a partnership with the Wake County Public School System that includes annual surveys of students; contributions to a nationwide database of electoral and civics education policies in all states; and surveying and interviewing teachers to understand efforts in schools to increase civic participation.

Team members will present their results to the American Association of Public Opinion Researchers in May.
Reasons Young People Don't Vote
Hillygus, who is also working on a book about the subject, says some of the reasons behind the lackluster youth turnout include:

High school civics classes are not adequately preparing youth to understand the basic skills they need for the voting process. They learn how many justices are on the Supreme Court, for example, but not that they can still vote if they aren't familiar with candidates on the ballot for the local water district.

Teachers -- especially in today's polarized climate -- often shy away from discussing politics in the classroom to avoid stepping on potential landmines. "I think that's shirking their duties," Hillygus says. There are ways to have students talk about issues that aren't biased and schools are avoiding that."

The voter registration laws are sometimes fluid. In 2010, North Carolinians ages 16 and 17 could preregister to vote. When Election Day came in 2012, they were already in the system. But North Carolina lawmakers removed preregistration in 2013. The 4th U.S. Court of Appeals has since struck down the law, so reinstatement of it in 2016 should help alleviate some of the problem, Hillygus notes.

Youth also bear responsibility for their low turnout. Hillygus says young people often lack the "grit" to follow through with registering to vote, forgetting they need to register a certain amount of time before Election Day, for example.

She says one study found that 55 percent of college students "messed up filling out their voter registration form, e.g., they left a question blank or didn't know their Social Security number."

Options such as preregistration in high school and automatic registration can help ensure the youth vote improves, she says.

"Preregistration and automatic registration have such consequences for young people," Hillygus says. "Because follow-through is so much of the story, there's a real high cost to procrastination in U.S. democracy."

To further dig into the thinking of young voters, the Bass Connections project includes interviewing young people about their family history related to politics, what propelled them to vote (or not), as well as if and how they registered.

Carlee Goldberg, a freshman from Parkland, Florida, says the handful of people she's interviewed so far this month say they struggle to find good information about candidates.

"There's no one place to find that type information," says Goldberg, a political science major who hopes to become a judge in Florida, where judges are elected. "For a lot of students, when trying to vote and they have no clue who's on the ballot, it either discourages them from voting or they just start just randomly filling it in."

"Or when they don't know they just vote down party lines," adds sophomore Ryan Geitner, a Hickory, North Carolina, native majoring in political science and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.

Both Duke students agree that giving teens the ability to register before they're 18 and providing them more practical information in high school about how to navigate the election system would go a long way in motivating more young people.

"That first year in which you can vote, I think, is the most crucial," Goldberg says. "That's when it's the most exciting, that's where you're probably most likely to vote just because you can. But if you don't vote in that year, I think it's more difficult after that."

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If Taylor Swift's admonition to vote doesn't move the needle among young Americans this year, researchers at Duke can help explain why. Students in a Bass Connections project are researching why so many young voters, even those who say they're politically motivated, often fail to turn out at the polls.

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Millennial voting has exceeded 50%

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Young people arent educated enough to vote comfortably

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1. They're not asked or encouraged to vote by candidates, campaigns, family, friends, or neighbors.

Young people who are contacted by an organization or a campaign are more likely to vote. Additionally, those who discuss an election are more likely to vote in it. [5]

A young person's home environment can have a large impact on their engagement. Youth who live in a place where members of their household are engaged and vote are more likely to do so themselves. [5]

Young people are more often transient and so they often feel less invested in local elections. [5]

If young people don't vote, they're less likely to be targeted by political campaigns. Leaving young voters off contact lists is a costly mistake. Some campaigns still bypass young voters, but research shows they respond when contacted. The most effective way of getting a new voter is the in-person door-knock by a peer; the least effective is an automated phone call. [5]

Research has consistently shown that contact by political campaigns is effective in engaging young people and driving voter turnout. This contact is particularly critical in civic deserts, where young people are less likely to vote than their peers in places where they perceive higher access to civic opportunities. [6]

What To Do About It: Focus on civic engagement, elections, and voting with all youth in your programs - even those too young to vote - and encourage them them research, discuss, and connect with local candidates.

2. They're not taught how the government and elections work or feel like they don't know enough to vote.

Whenever young people are surveyed, there is a significant lack of knowledge about how exactly the government works, and, therefore, how their vote actually matters- nearly 20 percent of young people said they don't think they know enough to be able to vote. [3]

Having information about how, when and where to vote can help young people be and feel prepared to vote as well as reduce any level of intimidation they may feel. [5]

They haven't learned how to register to vote. They haven't learned the best way to influence their elected representatives. They haven't learned that they have power. A healthy democracy needs well-informed, active citizens. But these citizens don't just magically appear. People learn citizenship. They learn it, for example, as children when they go the polling place to watch their parents vote. They learn it advocating for an issue they care about with their neighbors. They learn it by doing it. [4]

College graduates are more likely to look for information about politics. And they are more likely to have friends who vote. People without a college degree, he says, are less likely to seek out political information. They also are less likely to have friends who care about politics or talk about voting. [2]

What To Do About It: Teach young people how to register and vote - and help them learn and practice these behaviors before they turn 18. Help them learn about the issues and encourage them to share what they learn with others.

3. There are too many barriers for them to overcome.

Too busy or had a conflict on Election Day / couldn't afford to spend time in long line; lack of transportation; inconvenient hours or location of polling place / trouble locating their polling place; registration problems / lacking proper ID; or being out of town / did not receive an absentee ballot in time to vote. [1]

Among youth 18 and 19 years old who were not registered to vote, 23% said they missed the registration deadlines, 6% said they didn't know where or how to register. [6]

Young people who are registered to vote turn out in high numbers. In the 2008 election, 84% of those youth 18-29 who were registered to vote actually cast a ballot. Guiding youth through the registration process is one potential step to closing the age-related voting gap. [5]

A state's laws related to voter registration and voting can have an impact on youth voter turnout. Seven out of the top 10 youth turnout states had some of the more ambitious measures, including Election Day registration, voting by mail (Oregon), or not requiring registration to vote (North Dakota). [5]

Many would-be voters face a range of barriers: voter ID laws, registration difficulty, or criminal records. [3]

What To Do About It: Ask the young people you work with if there's any reason they wouldn't be able to vote if they wanted to, and focus your voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts on addressing those barriers.

4. They're not interested in politics or feel like voting won't make a difference.

They don't like the candidates or the issues. [1]

Some are apathetic or too busy. Others don't like their choices, they don't think their vote matters, or they think the system is corrupt. [3]

A majority of young people don't think voting is an effective way to change society. [3]

Over a third (38%) of non-voters indicated they were not interested in the election or not involved in politics. [6]

What To Do About It: This might be the toughest reason to overcome. In the short term, we encourage you to help young people discover why politics and voting matters by showing them how the issues they volunteer to help fix also need to be addressed through policy to truly solve the problem. Long term, engaging them in advocacy for policies that make it easier to vote, or for campaign finance or gerrymandering reform could help them feel invested in changing the system.
Sources
[1] https://civicyouth.org/why-youth-dont-vote-differences-by-race-and-education/

[2] https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/4-reasons-why-many-people-dont-vote

[3] https://www.npr.org/2018/09/10/645223716/on-the-sidelines-of-democracy-exploring-why-so-many-americans-dont-vote

[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/09/20/many-young-people-dont-vote-because-they-never-learned-how-heres-free-class-now-schools-trying-change-that/

[5] https://civicyouth.org/quick-facts/youth-voting/#2

[6] https://civicyouth.org/teens-and-elections/?cat_id=6

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4 Reasons Young People Don't Vote... and What To Do About It

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Young people who are contacted by an organization or a campaign are more likely to vote. Additionally, those who discuss an election are more likely to vote in it. [5] A young person's home environment can have a large impact on their engagement.

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(1) Promote civics classes that give a more adept teaching of politics and why you should vote even if you can’t write a 1000 page essay about the candidates. These classes should also teach students how to do research about the candidates quickly and accurately.

(2) There’s nothing to really do about the electoral college at this moment because in this article: https://www.npr.org/2019/03/22/705627996/abolishing-the-electoral-college-would-be-more-complicated-than-it-may-seem, it talks about how abolishing the electoral college would take years, there’s really no way it could be done by 2020… but it can always be thought about for the future.

(3) We could open more voting areas in minority-driven communities because voting areas are often based in "safe" areas (often churches). We could also try to reform the registration for voting, to make it simpler for people to understand and change if need be.

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Education  Data show that the single biggest predictor of whether someone will vote is whether they hold a college degree, Burden notes. College graduates make more money, on average. They are more likely to look for information about politics. And they are more likely to have friends who vote. People without a college degree, he says, are less likely to seek out political information. They also are less likely to have friends who care about politics or talk about voting.

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In my senior year of high school, I was sitting in my government class as my teacher begged us to vote. He had to know that he and I would never vote the same way. He used to call me a "dang hippie" instead of using my name. But he met my eyes along with those of every other student in that class. His voice quavered as he implored us - for the sake of our country - to vote.

My teacher was begging because millions of people who can vote, don't. Voter turnout in the United States is incredibly low compared to similar countries, notes Donald Green. He's a political scientist at Columbia University in New York City. In fact, U.S. voter turnout ranks 31 out of 35 developed countries - nations with advanced economies and a heavy use of technology. That's according to a Pew Research Center study released this past summer.

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It's a little surprising that so many Americans don't vote. Most are fairly interested in politics, notes Mert Moral. He's a political scientist at the State University of New York at Binghamton. "If you look at survey data, you find more Americans are equally, if not more, engaged than their counterparts [in other countries]," he says. "They have bumper stickers. They talk about politics. They are interested in political topics at the local level."

So why don't people vote? Scientists have been looking into this. Below are four reasons they offer to explain why many people do not show up at the polls.

Why don't people vote?

1) Registration takes work In many countries, being registered to vote is automatic. If you are a citizen, you are signed up to vote. Not so in the United States. It is up to each person there to sign up, notes Barry Burden. He's a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. To register, someone must go to an official site, such as a library or a government office, then fill out paperwork. A 2012 Pew Research Center study reported that 51 million citizens - nearly one-in-four eligible to vote - had not registered.

Easier registration could mean more voting. Burden and his colleagues showed that during the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections, a "one-stop shop" where people could register and vote at the same time increased voter turnout. By contrast, making it easier for people to vote by letting them vote before Election Day (known as early voting), actually lowered the voting rate. The researchers published their findings in 2013 in the American Journal of Political Science.

2) Education Data show that the single biggest predictor of whether someone will vote is whether they hold a college degree, Burden notes. College graduates make more money, on average. They are more likely to look for information about politics. And they are more likely to have friends who vote. People without a college degree, he says, are less likely to seek out political information. They also are less likely to have friends who care about politics or talk about voting.

3) Two parties may not be enough The United States has two main political parties: Republicans and Democrats. Other political parties exist, such as the Green party and the Libertarians. Few people, however, vote for candidates of those "other" parties. This is because U.S. elections only reward what is known as "first past the post." The one who gets the most votes wins.

In many other countries, such as the United Kingdom, people don't vote for individuals. They vote for parties to sit in a Parliament. The party that dominates the Parliament gets to pick the Prime Minister. But even a non-dominant party can get one or more members in Parliament - if that party gets enough votes. "A party that got 25 percent of the vote could get 25 percent of the seats," Burden says. "That's very encouraging."

In contrast, it wouldn't matter if the presidential candidate for the Green party or the Libertarian party got 25 percent of the U.S. vote. If 25 percent wasn't the highest percentage of votes, their candidate wouldn't become president. No one else from their party would automatically get a seat in Congress either. Americans vote for candidates for particular, individual seats.

Katie Hargrave/Flickr (CC-BY-2.0)

Americans also vote for Congressional candidates only in their particular geographical area. So a candidate from a third party would have to win the majority of votes from their particular area to get the seat in Congress. And many candidates from that party would have to win in many different areas to get enough seats in Congress to pass laws that reflect their party's values.

Such minor-party candidates seldom raise much money to campaign. Meanwhile, the two big political parties tend to raise lots of money to help their candidates. So third or fourth parties can't get organized and don't put forward many (or sometimes any) candidates. After all, what's the point of putting in a lot of effort if you have little chance of winning?

This promotes a system where candidates tend to be members of only the major political parties. And in a two-party system, voters might not find that either candidate represents their views. And where they don't, Moral says, voters might just stay home.

"A third-party candidate can't win an election here," he says. So where they don't like the Republican or Democrat running for office, Moral says, people may just not bother to vote at all.

4) Apathy and burnout Who your friends are can affect whether you vote. "We use voting as a tool to transmit to others who we are," explains Eyal Winter. An economist, he works at the University of Leicester in England and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. Voting - and then telling others that you did, or publicly stating that you plan to - is a way to show loyalty to your social group and its values, he says.

But some people just don't care about politics, which can lead to voter apathy. And if a social group doesn't regard politics as very important, its members may not bother to vote, Winter notes. In fact, he says, one might argue that in terms of any one citizen, "it makes no sense to vote." Only very rarely has a single vote changed the outcome of an election. And where that happened, it usually was only in very small, local elections.

Not only that, where elections occur often, people may experience voter burnout. "One of the things that makes the U.S. strange is that there's a lot of elections," says Burden. "We ask voters to make a lot of decisions." Getting out to the polls can be a hassle. What's more, learning about every single issue takes time. If people are asked to vote too often, or choose a position on too many subjects, they might just opt out of the whole process. "We have a complicated system and I think that produces fatigue," Burden says.

There are many other reasons people might not vote - from anger at the government to concern that being a registered voter will make the government more likely to call them up for jury duty. What could change their minds? Read Part 2 to learn about four ways backed by science that can drive more people to the polls.

Power Words
More About Power Words

apathy A flat mood, where one is indifferent to people, opportunities and the environment around them. It's marked by a lack of enthusiasm for things, for not caring any more.

behavior The way a person or other organism acts towards others, or conducts itself.

colleague Someone who works with another; a co-worker or team member.

Congress The part of the U.S. federal government charged with writing laws, setting the U.S. budget, and confirming many presidential appointments to the courts, to represent the U.S. government interests overseas and to run administrative agencies. The U.S. Congress is made of two parts: the Senate, consisting of two members from each state, and the House of Representatives, which consists of a total of 435 members, with at least one from each state (and dozens more for the states with the biggest populations).

developed country Sometimes called an industrialized country, this is a nation that tends to be relatively wealthy on the basis of having substantial commercial and industrial activity. Today, developed countries also tend to be among the more technologically advanced nations.

high school A designation for grades nine through twelve in the U.S. system of compulsory public education. High-school graduates may apply to colleges for further, advanced education.

journal (in science) A publication in which scientists share their research findings with the public. Some journals publish papers from all fields of science, technology, engineering and math, while others are specific to a single subject. The best journals are peer-reviewed: They send out all submitted articles to outside experts to be read and critiqued. The goal, here, is to prevent the publication of mistakes, fraud or sloppy work.

media (in the social sciences) A term for the ways information is delivered and shared within a society. It encompasses not only the traditional media - newspapers, magazines, radio and television - but also Internet- and smartphone-based outlets, such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook and more. The newer, digital media are sometimes referred to as social media. The singular form of this term is medium.

network A group of interconnected people or things.

peer Someone who is an equal, based on age, education, status, training or some other features.

political science A social science that deals with the governing of people, largely by elected officials and governments.

political scientist Someone who studies or deals with the governing of people, largely by elected officials and governments.

poll (adj. polling) To sample the opinions of people and tally the total with a survey or vote.

social (adj.) Relating to gatherings of people; a term for animals (or people) that prefer to exist in groups. (noun) A gathering of people, for instance those who belong to a club or other organization, for the purpose of enjoying each other's company.

social media Internet-based media, such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, that allow people to connect with each other (often anonymously) and to share information.

social science The scientific study of people and their relationships to each other.

survey (v.) To ask questions that glean data on the opinions, practices (such as dining or sleeping habits), knowledge or skills of a broad range of people. Researchers select the number and types of people questioned in hopes that the answers these individuals give will be representative of others who are their age, belong to the same ethnic group or live in the same region. (n.) The list of questions that will be offered to glean those data.

transmit To send or pass along

Bethany Brookshire was a longtime staff writer at Science News for Students. She has a Ph.D. in physiology and pharmacology and likes to write about neuroscience, biology, climate and more. She thinks Porgs are an invasive species.

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In my senior year of high school, I was sitting in my government class as my teacher begged us to vote. He had to know that he and I would never vote the same way. He used to call me a "dang hippie" instead of using my name.

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(1) Civics classes aren’t often taught in school, at least, not taught to the extent that they need to be. “High school civics classes are not adequately preparing youth to understand the basic skills they need for the voting process. They learn how many justices are on the Supreme Court, for example, but not that they can still vote if they aren’t familiar with candidates on the ballot for the local water district.” (https://today.duke.edu/2018/10/why-so-many-young-people-don%E2%80%99t-vote)

(2) Overwhelmingly, young people simply don’t feel like their vote matters. As shown in the 2016 election, even if a candidate wins popular vote in America, the electoral college can choose whoever they personally wish to be president. If this practice continues, I personally think that it would be hard to convince people their vote matters.

(3) Registering to vote is also a fairly confusing process. If you mistake a letter in your name, or if a government worker mistakes it, it takes weeks to months to years for it to get fixed so that it perfectly matches the name on one’s ID. There’s also studies that show that problems of these sort happen more often in youth of color than in white youth. https://civicyouth.org/why-youth-dont-vote-differences-by-race-and-education/

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Many studies found young voters are excited to vote, but then they don’t go out and vote. What happens between registration and the actual voting date?

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Analysis | Young people say they plan on voting in November - but they usually don't

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Harvard's Institute of Politics regularly surveys young Americans on their political views. They've been doing this for a while. So it's little surprise that those responsible for the release of the spring 2018 iteration Tuesday knew exactly what was likely to attract the most attention.

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Registration takes work.Not so in the United States. It is up to each person there to sign up, notes Barry Burden. He’s a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. To register, someone must go to an official site, such as a library or a government office, then fill out paperwork.

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In my senior year of high school, I was sitting in my government class as my teacher begged us to vote. He had to know that he and I would never vote the same way. He used to call me a "dang hippie" instead of using my name. But he met my eyes along with those of every other student in that class. His voice quavered as he implored us - for the sake of our country - to vote.

My teacher was begging because millions of people who can vote, don't. Voter turnout in the United States is incredibly low compared to similar countries, notes Donald Green. He's a political scientist at Columbia University in New York City. In fact, U.S. voter turnout ranks 31 out of 35 developed countries - nations with advanced economies and a heavy use of technology. That's according to a Pew Research Center study released this past summer.

Thank you for signing up!

It's a little surprising that so many Americans don't vote. Most are fairly interested in politics, notes Mert Moral. He's a political scientist at the State University of New York at Binghamton. "If you look at survey data, you find more Americans are equally, if not more, engaged than their counterparts [in other countries]," he says. "They have bumper stickers. They talk about politics. They are interested in political topics at the local level."

So why don't people vote? Scientists have been looking into this. Below are four reasons they offer to explain why many people do not show up at the polls.

Why don't people vote?

1) Registration takes work In many countries, being registered to vote is automatic. If you are a citizen, you are signed up to vote. Not so in the United States. It is up to each person there to sign up, notes Barry Burden. He's a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. To register, someone must go to an official site, such as a library or a government office, then fill out paperwork. A 2012 Pew Research Center study reported that 51 million citizens - nearly one-in-four eligible to vote - had not registered.

Easier registration could mean more voting. Burden and his colleagues showed that during the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections, a "one-stop shop" where people could register and vote at the same time increased voter turnout. By contrast, making it easier for people to vote by letting them vote before Election Day (known as early voting), actually lowered the voting rate. The researchers published their findings in 2013 in the American Journal of Political Science.

2) Education Data show that the single biggest predictor of whether someone will vote is whether they hold a college degree, Burden notes. College graduates make more money, on average. They are more likely to look for information about politics. And they are more likely to have friends who vote. People without a college degree, he says, are less likely to seek out political information. They also are less likely to have friends who care about politics or talk about voting.

3) Two parties may not be enough The United States has two main political parties: Republicans and Democrats. Other political parties exist, such as the Green party and the Libertarians. Few people, however, vote for candidates of those "other" parties. This is because U.S. elections only reward what is known as "first past the post." The one who gets the most votes wins.

In many other countries, such as the United Kingdom, people don't vote for individuals. They vote for parties to sit in a Parliament. The party that dominates the Parliament gets to pick the Prime Minister. But even a non-dominant party can get one or more members in Parliament - if that party gets enough votes. "A party that got 25 percent of the vote could get 25 percent of the seats," Burden says. "That's very encouraging."

In contrast, it wouldn't matter if the presidential candidate for the Green party or the Libertarian party got 25 percent of the U.S. vote. If 25 percent wasn't the highest percentage of votes, their candidate wouldn't become president. No one else from their party would automatically get a seat in Congress either. Americans vote for candidates for particular, individual seats.

Katie Hargrave/Flickr (CC-BY-2.0)

Americans also vote for Congressional candidates only in their particular geographical area. So a candidate from a third party would have to win the majority of votes from their particular area to get the seat in Congress. And many candidates from that party would have to win in many different areas to get enough seats in Congress to pass laws that reflect their party's values.

Such minor-party candidates seldom raise much money to campaign. Meanwhile, the two big political parties tend to raise lots of money to help their candidates. So third or fourth parties can't get organized and don't put forward many (or sometimes any) candidates. After all, what's the point of putting in a lot of effort if you have little chance of winning?

This promotes a system where candidates tend to be members of only the major political parties. And in a two-party system, voters might not find that either candidate represents their views. And where they don't, Moral says, voters might just stay home.

"A third-party candidate can't win an election here," he says. So where they don't like the Republican or Democrat running for office, Moral says, people may just not bother to vote at all.

4) Apathy and burnout Who your friends are can affect whether you vote. "We use voting as a tool to transmit to others who we are," explains Eyal Winter. An economist, he works at the University of Leicester in England and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. Voting - and then telling others that you did, or publicly stating that you plan to - is a way to show loyalty to your social group and its values, he says.

But some people just don't care about politics, which can lead to voter apathy. And if a social group doesn't regard politics as very important, its members may not bother to vote, Winter notes. In fact, he says, one might argue that in terms of any one citizen, "it makes no sense to vote." Only very rarely has a single vote changed the outcome of an election. And where that happened, it usually was only in very small, local elections.

Not only that, where elections occur often, people may experience voter burnout. "One of the things that makes the U.S. strange is that there's a lot of elections," says Burden. "We ask voters to make a lot of decisions." Getting out to the polls can be a hassle. What's more, learning about every single issue takes time. If people are asked to vote too often, or choose a position on too many subjects, they might just opt out of the whole process. "We have a complicated system and I think that produces fatigue," Burden says.

There are many other reasons people might not vote - from anger at the government to concern that being a registered voter will make the government more likely to call them up for jury duty. What could change their minds? Read Part 2 to learn about four ways backed by science that can drive more people to the polls.

Power Words
More About Power Words

apathy A flat mood, where one is indifferent to people, opportunities and the environment around them. It's marked by a lack of enthusiasm for things, for not caring any more.

behavior The way a person or other organism acts towards others, or conducts itself.

colleague Someone who works with another; a co-worker or team member.

Congress The part of the U.S. federal government charged with writing laws, setting the U.S. budget, and confirming many presidential appointments to the courts, to represent the U.S. government interests overseas and to run administrative agencies. The U.S. Congress is made of two parts: the Senate, consisting of two members from each state, and the House of Representatives, which consists of a total of 435 members, with at least one from each state (and dozens more for the states with the biggest populations).

developed country Sometimes called an industrialized country, this is a nation that tends to be relatively wealthy on the basis of having substantial commercial and industrial activity. Today, developed countries also tend to be among the more technologically advanced nations.

high school A designation for grades nine through twelve in the U.S. system of compulsory public education. High-school graduates may apply to colleges for further, advanced education.

journal (in science) A publication in which scientists share their research findings with the public. Some journals publish papers from all fields of science, technology, engineering and math, while others are specific to a single subject. The best journals are peer-reviewed: They send out all submitted articles to outside experts to be read and critiqued. The goal, here, is to prevent the publication of mistakes, fraud or sloppy work.

media (in the social sciences) A term for the ways information is delivered and shared within a society. It encompasses not only the traditional media - newspapers, magazines, radio and television - but also Internet- and smartphone-based outlets, such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook and more. The newer, digital media are sometimes referred to as social media. The singular form of this term is medium.

network A group of interconnected people or things.

peer Someone who is an equal, based on age, education, status, training or some other features.

political science A social science that deals with the governing of people, largely by elected officials and governments.

political scientist Someone who studies or deals with the governing of people, largely by elected officials and governments.

poll (adj. polling) To sample the opinions of people and tally the total with a survey or vote.

social (adj.) Relating to gatherings of people; a term for animals (or people) that prefer to exist in groups. (noun) A gathering of people, for instance those who belong to a club or other organization, for the purpose of enjoying each other's company.

social media Internet-based media, such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, that allow people to connect with each other (often anonymously) and to share information.

social science The scientific study of people and their relationships to each other.

survey (v.) To ask questions that glean data on the opinions, practices (such as dining or sleeping habits), knowledge or skills of a broad range of people. Researchers select the number and types of people questioned in hopes that the answers these individuals give will be representative of others who are their age, belong to the same ethnic group or live in the same region. (n.) The list of questions that will be offered to glean those data.

transmit To send or pass along

Bethany Brookshire was a longtime staff writer at Science News for Students. She has a Ph.D. in physiology and pharmacology and likes to write about neuroscience, biology, climate and more. She thinks Porgs are an invasive species.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In my senior year of high school, I was sitting in my government class as my teacher begged us to vote. He had to know that he and I would never vote the same way. He used to call me a "dang hippie" instead of using my name.

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It says there are too many barriers for young adults to go through
https://ysa.org/4-reasons-young-people-dont-vote-and-what-to-do-about-it/

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Analysis | Here are the issues that will get millennials to the polls in November

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October 1, 2018 What issues would drive young voters to the polls - and how are they likely to vote? That's a hot topic among election watchers, since Americans ages 18 to 34 make up over 30 percent of the potential electorate - but historically that age group has voted at lower rates.

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I researched the statistics comparing mid-terms and presidential elections based on eligibility to vote.

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Only 51% of eligible voters in the 2016 election voted while in the midterms only 31% of eligible voters voted.

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Young Americans have been ramping up political engagement, but there is a long way to go until the nation's second-largest voting base exceeds the voter turnout rates of older Americans, based on day-after turnout estimates from the 2018 midterm election.

An estimated 31% of eligible people ages 18 to 29 voted in the 2018 midterms, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). This exceeds participation from the same age group in the 2014 midterms by about 10 percentage points but is still far below the number that voted in the 2016 presidential election, when 51% of eligible millennial voters cast a ballot.

The turnout difference between 2016 and 2018 is unsurprising since midterm-election turnout is almost always eclipsed by presidential years, according to the United States Election Project, a election-data-focused website. The high-profile White House battles draw engagement in other down-ballot races, and overall interest leads more people to emphasize the importance of voting. But with 31% participating in 2018, a majority of eligible voters still didn't participate.

If the youth vote increased by about 10 percentage points in 2018, as CIRCLE anticipates it will in the final tally, the organization said that would be "the highest level of participation [in midterm elections] among youth in the past quarter-century." That rate of expansion would mean millions more young Americans voted this year, almost certainly influencing key races with tight victory margins, helping elect a historic 100 women to Congress and LGBTQ+ candidates to office.

"A youth wave is sweeping this nation," Debra Hauser, the president for nonprofit Advocates for Youth, said in a statement. "Young people are outraged by politicians whose rhetoric and actions embolden extremist bigots. They don't accept this world of racism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism, nor the violence and harm that goes along with it. In record numbers, they voted for change."

But while millennials are quickly becoming the largest eligible voting generation, according to the Pew Research Center, they do not yet vote consistently enough to be the most influential voting age bracket. According to U.S. Census Bureau data from 2016, the lowest percentages of registered and active voters are found among young people. Traditionally, America's voter participation tends to increase with age, with 65-to-74-year-olds making up the most consistent and active group of voters in the U.S., according to U.S. Census data. Meanwhile, Gen Z is just starting to come of voting age; 7 million Gen Z voters were eligible to vote in 2016, according to Pew.

Youth turnout exceeded the 31% national average in states with contentious political fights, like Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin, according to estimates from CIRCLE. In these high-profile regions of the country, the organization maintains that the turnout of America's liberal-leaning youth made all the difference. In Wisconsin, for instance, Republican governor Scott Walker was narrowly ousted by Democrat Tony Evers, a candidate who led Walker with young people, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.

In Georgia, another spot where CIRCLE believes youth turnout was above average, Republican Brian Kemp leads Democrat Stacey Abrams in the state's close gubernatorial race, with Libertarian Ted Metz pulling less than 1 percent of the vote. The margin between Kemp and Abrams remains close enough that Abrams has refused to concede. Georgia has a unique rule that if a candidate is unable to secure 50% of the vote, then the top two candidates advance to a runoff election in December. During a speech, Abrams said, "Votes remain to be counted; there are voices that remain to be heard.... We believe our chance for a stronger Georgia is within reach."

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The Youth Vote Had a Big Impact on the 2018 Midterms, but It Could've Been MUCH Bigger

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Young Americans have been ramping up political engagement, but there is a long way to go until the nation's second-largest voting base exceeds the voter turnout rates of older Americans, based on day-after turnout estimates from the 2018 midterm election.

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Could News and TV be affecting younger audiences when they talk about politics?

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Young people don't feel inf

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Young people vote in lower numbers because they don't feel like they know enough.
https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/413938-young-people-vote-in-lower-numbers-because-they-dont-think-they

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Has our public opinion of candidates been the primary cause of the lack of voting in America?

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According to Forbes, the reason millennial are not voting is because they don't want to waste their time waiting in lines at the polls. Maybe creating more polls would allow for less of a line, making voting not so time consuming.

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Here's the embarrassing truth: I'm 25 and have never voted.

For the 2008 election, I was tie dying in high school (and also ineligible). For 2012's, I was writing fiction in college. I looked at my first blue book two weeks ago. I think I'll vote this election, but giving up part of my November 8th to wait in line is nearly enough to dissuade me.

I'm not alone. Millennial voting rates have never exceeded 50%, even in 2008 when we hoisted Obama to the White House. According to a national poll last fall, just two-in-ten of America's young adults consider themselves "politically engaged and active." This election, only 41% of millennials ages 18-29 are certain they'll vote. Another 15%, like me, say they "probably" will. Depends on the line.

Millennials lament that politicians are self-serving. But here's the real reason millennials don't vote : so are we.

In the mid-1800s, transcendentalist Margaret Fuller envisioned the individualistic reality millennials now inhabit. Fuller believed, as Lori Anne Beste put it, "that American culture was best served by the influence of the self-cultivated individual." If individuals prioritized themselves, America would fulfill its destiny as a truly democratic nation.

Fuller-who lived when political institutions reigned (and 80% of eligible Americans voted, compared to 54% today)-couldn't have imagined the ultimate effect of her self-oriented ideals: political apathy and half-hearted democracy.

In 2016, we view engaging in politics as a personal choice, not a civic obligation. When one journalist asked a millennial if she's politically engaged, her reply epitomized our attitude: "Personally, I'm not." Today, participating in politics is a preference-like everything else, even morals. Less than half of millennials believe that "there are some things that are just wrong, regardless of the situation."

Individuals, not authorities like "God," police officers and presidents, know best. Harry Potter fans are more likely to believe in the "corruptness and ineptitude of politicians" and be anti-authoritarian. Fifty-six percent of college age millennials agree that government has become bigger because it has "gotten involved in things that people should do for themselves."

As individualism increases, each successive generation since World War II participates less in civic duties and governmental expectations.

To the extent we are political, millennials are moved by measures championing personal choice-not society, country or planet. Only half of millennials see themselves as patriotic, and less than a third consider themselves to be environmentalists. Just 19% of millennials see themselves as generally trusting of others, compared to 40% of boomers. But we support gay and interracial marriage, abortion and marijuana legalization substantially-and sometimes exponentially-more than other generations.

Our nation's increasing individualism has given a voice to marginalized people and made our nation more tolerant. It's opened up new ways of living and advanced the American dream of being anything you want to be. Self-belief gives us agency.

But individualism is by itself a dead end. "Without individuals, nothing happens; without institutions, nothing survives," said Os Guiness. Social progress is cultural, relational and individual. But it will also always, in part, be institutional. Institutions like our executive branch touch every aspect of our lives-whether we watch and value them or not.

In a recent New York Times column, David Brooks wrote, "The great challenge of our moment is the crisis of isolation and fragmentation, the need to rebind the fabric of a society that has been torn by selfishness, cynicism, distrust and autonomy."

Between this presidential election and the next, another 18 million millennials will become eligible to vote, surpassing the number of eligible boomers.

In the long-run, whether millennials vote next week has far more implication than who we vote for. I'm casting hope.
Don't miss a word from me: sign up for my newsletter. More on FORBES:

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The Science Behind Why Millennials Don't Vote

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Here's the embarrassing truth: I'm 25 and have never voted. For the 2008 election, I was tie dying in high school (and also ineligible). For 2012's, I was writing fiction in college. I looked at my first blue book two weeks ago.

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Could the decrease in active voting be due to the candidates in recent elections?

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See all the wonderful things Rachel Womiche has made

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if the graphs show a constant discrepancy between the age bracket is there a problem?

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young voters are less likely to vote because they feel like it won't make a difference.

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https://www.axios.com/2020-presidential-election-millennials-generation-z-8c54a77a-c6f5-40bc-850c-95e4f1217e62.html

The Millennial population has grown since the last election from immigration, and GenZ has continued to grow. A smaller percent, however, of Millennials are predicted to vote in the next election. A predicted 37% of Millennials and GenZ will make up the 2020 Election.

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See all the wonderful things Rachel Womiche has made

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See all the wonderful things Rachel Womiche has made

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https://www.thebestcolleges.org/9-reasons-we-need-young-voters-more-than-ever/

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The youth vote has the potential to be extremely influential in this country. While young voter participation in 2016declined by 2% from a record 52% at the 2008 election, today the voting population includes almost equal parts millennials and baby boomers.

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See all the wonderful things Bevin Schmer has made

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https://www.census.gov/prod/2014pubs/p20-573.pdf

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looking at table one from https://www.census.gov/prod/2014pubs/p20-573.pdf we can see an increase in the amount of 18-year-olds who voted across the years of 1996-2012

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Voting rates go up with age but looking at figure 1 on https://www.census.gov/prod/2014pubs/p20-573.pdf all age bracket except the 65 and older have had a descending trend sense 1964.

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There was and all time low in the 18 to 24 bracket between the years 1996 to 2000 which was a 32-33% turn out.
https://www.census.gov/prod/2014pubs/p20-573.pdf

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Voting during an election year in the 18 to 24 year old range has dropped a sum total of 12.9% between 1964 and 2012.
https://www.census.gov/prod/2014pubs/p20-573.pdf

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- every vote matters
- millennials take up nearly 50% of the population
-young people were hit hardest by the Great Recession (college debt, unemployment, financial troubles)
- young voters are incredibly diverse and can help to bring awareness to many different probs
- if they don't connect with politics and voting now, they most likely won't carry out voting etc when they get older
-youth have the power to sway an election

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Young voters notoriously neglect the importance of voting, but their voice is an important one on both sides of the aisle. Key issues in every election increasingly relate to the concerns of students and professionals between the ages of 18 and 29, making it essential for members within that age group to educate themselves on political issues and take to the polls. While millennials represented nearly 50% of the entire voter population in the 2016 election, they were further divided along race, gender, and education lines when considering key issues from both candidates.

Why is it important to vote, especially if you fall within a crucial age demographic? Below are some of the most compelling reasons that young voters are needed more than ever in local, state, and national elections.

The youth vote has the potential to be extremely influential in this country. While young voter participation in 2016 declined by 2% from a record 52% at the 2008 election, today the voting population includes almost equal parts millennials and baby boomers. As the boomer electorate decreases in size, experts suggest it is merely a matter of time before millennials become the largest and most powerful group driving future elections in the U.S. Unfortunately, not all who can vote will, meaning that fewer young people get to directly influence issues that might affect their lives for years to come, including college tuition reform and federal job programs.

While young people make up a large portion the voting-eligible population, they're much less likely than those who are older to get out and vote. In 2016, only 19% of people aged 18-29 cast their ballot in the presidential election; at 49%, 45-64-year-olds accounted for the largest electorate last year.

Some reports have attributed the outcome of the election to a "missed opportunity" on the part of millennials to affect change en masse: while the majority of young voters actually cast ballots for Hillary Clinton, their low turnout was not enough to counter the ballots of older voters. For this, researchers are increasingly interested in methods of successfully mobilizing young voter groups. Duke University recently initiated an innovative project designing policy reform to increase turnout among the youth.

Many young people cite feeling as though their vote doesn't count as their reason for not participating in elections. Millennials reported feeling especially disillusioned by both presidential candidates before the election in 2016, and many chose to sit out altogether as a result. In an America divided perhaps more than ever, every vote counts, especially those from one of the country's largest voting groups. President Barack Obama's election in 2008 is an example of this theory in motion, as his popularity with youth voters was one of the key elements of his campaign, giving him a large margin over competitors in a number of strategic states. Other elections in recent years have come down to just a few votes (Minnesota senator Al Franken won by just 312 votes in 2009 as one example), proving your vote does matter, maybe more than you realize.

College debt and a lack of jobs dealt some of the most crippling blows to the financial futures of many young voters after the Great Recession in the late-2000s. Though unemployment rates have declined and millennials have found their footing in a new economy, policy change and reform in areas affecting college students, such as debt forgiveness and healthcare, are as crucial now as they were in the 2008 election.

The situation won't be changed by sitting idle while others make major political decisions. Youth voters who want to inspire change need to show their support for the candidates whom they feel best represent their needs. No one else is going to vote in the interest of young people except young people.

The divisive nature of partisan politics is alive and well among young voters in today's world. So much so that the millennial electorate is expected to be the first demographic group with the ability to challenge the basic two-party system, potentially driving the need for alternative political parties whom millennials feel can represent the needs of a diverse population through a more inclusive agenda.

The same young adults in 2016 who were more likely to identify as liberals were also less likely to identify as Democrats. Currently, millennials are the most diverse voting group. Also of note? At 35%, a higher percentage of young voters identified with independent political views, rather than Republican or Democrat, than in the past three presidential elections.

Participating in politics is a hard-won right in our nation. Some experts argue that young Americans with such potential for affecting political change don't exercise the right to vote as often as they should. Many even suggest that the voting age should be lowered in an effort to promote earlier voting among teenagers and young adults. Building a relationship with the political process as early as possible is key to making voting a lifelong habit: you may already be familiar with the phrase, "Vote early, vote often." If you're historically a repeat voter, you're much less likely to skip a trip to the polls in the future. This sort of habit-forming participation is key to driving policy and electing leaders who represent the needs of voters of all ages.

In today's tech-savvy world, there is no excuse not to vote because you don't know enough about the candidates. In fact, one might find it harder to escape day-to-day political news than subscribe to it. In an era in which Twitter is preferred means of communication for the President of the United States, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat have become as crucial as the candidates' own websites for disseminating information about relevant issues. As this type of civic education in everything is typical for most Americans today, it isn't just beneficial in the months leading up the election but also on a day-to-day basis. The current online climate allows young voters to form a fuller picture of the candidates and their platforms in a medium they're familiar with.

As mentioned before, your vote does matter, so much so that the collective "youth vote" could actually sway the election. Millennials have been credited with the decisive vote in the 2012 election of Barack Obama for a second term as president; Obama won 67% of the national youth vote, proving more popular in crucial states such as Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, over his opponent Mitt Romney. In 2016, candidates campaigned hard for the 18-29 set, singling out initiatives to target millennials as a powerful electorate group. Why? Because they understand the necessity of winning approval from this voting majority.

You may feel that choosing a president or a senator just isn't something that affects your life right now. You might not yet be struggling with issues like college debt or finding a full-time job. For many millennials, adulthood brings many new challenges, like college, marriage, buying a house, paying for your own health insurance, and/or starting a business, all of which could radically change your perspective on political issues. While you can't predict who or where you'll be in four years, you can be sure that the political officials elected into office and the policies they implement will impact your life in the coming months and years. Why not have a say? Speak up, make a choice, and take part in the election to protect your interests in your first few years in the real world.

How You Can Get Involved and Vote

No matter your age or voting history, the first step in getting involved should be to check your voter status; research how to register to vote in your state if you're not. If you are already registered in your state but have recently moved, you will need to update your address in order to provide current registration at your local polling place on election day. Some states now make it possible for you to register to vote online, though traditionally voters must register by mail or in person. You can, however, change your address online or via text message in some states, as well as search for polling places near you online.

Some states allow voting by mail for local, state, and even presidential elections. Students who are studying abroad or travelling during the election and thus, not in their home state or even in the U.S., must request an absentee ballot through the Federal Post Card Application (FPCA) form. Although they are requesting an absentee ballot from outside of their home state or country, the student must still be registered to vote in their state of residence to be eligible to vote in a U.S. election while away.

Helpful Links

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9 Reasons We Need Young Voters More Than Ever

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Young voters notoriously neglect the importance of voting, but their voice is an important one on both sides of the aisle. Key issues in every election increasingly relate to the concerns of students and professionals between the ages of 18 and 29, making it essential for members within that age group to educate themselves on political issues and take to the polls.

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Millennial voting rates have never exceeded 50%, even in 2008 when we hoisted Obama to the White House. According to a national poll last fall, just two-in-ten of America’s young adults consider themselves “politically engaged and active.”

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Matthew McCormack & Clayton Grisham
the average turnout between age brackets is about the same every year from 1986 which means that as of this graph.
https://573e2776-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/uselectionsproject/home/voter-turnout/demographics/Turnout%20by%20Age%202018.png?attachauth=ANoY7crEbQo5CF5myXlAlJ_WqG7b87dplNPxl25j3Xl3IN1Bjmrji8v2FXogqPaNnwZbs3w_vaQ1UdqcS1LGOHtBdywMcEOZJ49KOHMPtLHT_s6ynL8vit-az03a3tk9Vu4-TtKu3o63lI4Z0GZJWe3XTpaAZHumQaykKD_PnMgtI3mhVpu7QWpkpUsxGSudzCAaJL8eg9E21MgmAzTjCugnSQyUiC0W0IVeCFCmev3C-L751Inw43uJbDeERXOUBbOoFfwLv-fHZ2C3JHjHPovXAQPNSnpPcg%3D%3D&attredirects=0

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The percent of young people voting according to race.

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The percent of young people voting according to race.

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According to CIRCLE's analysis of young people's voter percentage by race, there's a majority of white citizens with 61%. Black (15%) and Latino (17%) citizens are not wanting to vote. Why?

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It's clear that Clinton did not maintain the same level of enthusiasm among young people that Obama did in 2008 and 2012. That gap in millennial support this year is evident in the increase in support for third-party candidates (from 3 percent nationally in 2012 to 8 percent this year) and potentially lower voter turnout, particularly in swing states. Although millennials nationwide still favored Democrats by 18 points, that margin of support was 5 percentage points lower than in 2012, and more than 20 points lower in some of the swing states that Obama won and Clinton lost.

CIRCLE's analysis of the national exit poll data also suggests that levels of racial and ethnic diversity among the youth electorate were consistent with the previous two presidential elections: overall, millennial voters are more diverse than the rest of the electorate.

This year, however, there appears to have been a higher percentage of youth with at least some college education. Additionally, in contrast to recent elections, young white men made up a larger proportion of the white youth electorate than young white women.

A brief note on exit polls:

Exit polls are surveys given to a sample of voters across the country after they leave their polling places. A sample of people who vote early and absentee/by mail (who now make up about 35-40 percent of the electorate) are surveyed by phone, and included in the general poll results.

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How Millennials Voted in the 2016 Presidential Election (with Lesson Plan)

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It's clear that Clinton did not maintain the same level of enthusiasm among young people that Obama did in 2008 and 2012. That gap in millennial support this year is evident in the increase in support for third-party candidates (from 3 percent nationally in 2012 to 8 percent this year) and potentially lower voter turnout, particularly in swing states.

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"In my senior year in high school, I was probably borderline socialist. Though I don’t really think I understood what a socialist was. I was blatantly liberal and didn’t bother to check myself. " This is a quote from Reese age 23, and has never voted. She says in the article that she is scared to make the wrong choice and that she wasn't the most informed when it came to the elections. If schools work to make sure that the upcoming voters are informed we could potentially have more turnout.

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More than half of American adults plan to cast ballots in November, but only a third of people ages 18 to 29 say they will. Here, 12 young adults on why they probably won't vote. (See also: Many reasons why you really, really should.)

Samantha | Age 22 | Old Bridge, New Jersey | Last Voted: 2016

2016 was such a disillusioning experience. Going into the election, I was so proud to be in this country at this moment, so proud to be voting for Hillary Clinton. I had my Clinton sweatshirt on all day. I was on Twitter telling people that if they didn't vote they were dead to me - like the whole thing. Watching the results come in, it was just disheartening. My faith in the whole system was crushed pretty quickly. That was the first general election I could vote in, too.

Those actual full-progressive candidates make me optimistic. But there's still a lot of powerful people, especially in the Democratic Party, that are centrists, and that's just a little frustrating when it comes time to stand up to this president and the policies he's trying to pass. Like the Kavanaugh thing - I get that they're the minority and that was an uphill battle, but I just feel like there wasn't a big enough fight put up to that, and I think there continues to not be a big enough fight.

Full disclosure: I have a ballot sitting at home. In 2016, I voted absentee and I just marked off "Send me a mail-in ballot for every election." I don't really get that argument that it's really hard. Like, it's not that hard.

I think there's a way to be an informed nonvoter. I'd rather have an informed nonvoter than an uninformed voter going in and making a choice they don't understand. You're voting for a politician going into office, and I'm seeing less change there than I am through grassroots organizing. Since Trump's been elected, those grassroots groups have really been doing great, great work. So I guess it's that: where you're seeing the impact.

Reese | Age 23 | Hudson, Ohio | Has Never Voted

In my senior year in high school, I was probably borderline socialist. Though I don't really think I understood what a socialist was. I was blatantly liberal and didn't bother to check myself. My friend gave me The Prince, by Machiavelli. I read that, and it provided a certain nuance that I didn't have. From there, I read more, and I realized that a lot of things I'd thought before were wrong. I got into Hellenism. I read Cicero, Livy. Later on, I got into Voltaire. Then, in college, my field is American politics and political science. I prefer constitutional law and Alexander Hamilton.

There are things that I'm aware of where I'm certain I'm right. But for most things, although I feel strongly, it's very probable that there's some aspect of this that I don't understand. Somebody provides a new avenue of thought, and it changes the way I think about something. I never felt certain enough to vote. But I'm a political-science student, and the talk of voting is really big in my circle of friends. In 2016, I almost did. Of course, I'm not a big fan of Trump, but I didn't know if Trump was going to be a flash in the pan or - I just didn't know what to do. I didn't want to help something that might end up being wrong.

Tim | Age 27 | Austin, Texas | Has Never Voted

I tried to register for the 2016 election, but it was beyond the deadline by the time I tried to do it. I hate mailing stuff; it gives me anxiety. I don't remember seeing voter-registration drives, no. I've seen a lot more the past two years. I'm sure there must have been stuff. I just don't remember it.

I guess I still thought, Okay, my vote is largely symbolic in this election because I'm in Texas. Even if Texas went blue, I'm pretty sure my vote wouldn't matter anyway. Austin is very liberal, but it's very gerrymandered.
The House district I'm in goes GOP every election, which is ridiculous. I was particularly interested in voting in 2016 because Donald Trump is so stupid. It drove me up a wall - he knew way less about the government than I do.

I have ADHD, and it makes it hard for me to do certain tasks where the payoff is far off in the future or abstract. I don't find it intrinsically motivational. The amount of work logically isn't that much: Fill out a form, mail it, go to a specific place on a specific day. But those kind of tasks can be hard for me to do if I'm not enthusiastic about it. That's kind of a problem with social attitudes around, you know, "It's your civic duty to vote." I once told a co-worker I didn't vote, and she said, "That's really irresponsible," in this judgmental voice. You can't build a policy around calling people irresponsible. You need to make people enthusiastic and engaged.

After 2016, a couple friends became a lot more politically active, and they helped me register and mail the form. So I actually am registered now. I'm leaning toward probably voting in the midterms. It feels like the reason to vote is symbolic. The motivation isn't about the actual value my vote has; it's more like a theoretical signaling value. If that's the case, I would rather signal that Democrats should have more progressive candidates, rather than assuming that everyone on the left will automatically vote for the candidates they run. In the end, whether I vote probably depends on how close the candidates are.

Megan | Age 29 | San Francisco, California | Last Voted: 2014

I rent and move around quite a bit, and when I try to get absentee ballots, they need me to print out a form and mail it to them no more than 30 days before the election but also no less than seven days before the election. Typically, I check way before that time, then forget to check again, or just
say "Fuck it" because I don't own a printer or stamps anyway. It's incredibly difficult for hourly workers or young people who are in rotational programs or travel frequently for their careers to vote. I wish every state's rules were the same so there was not so much confusion and it was easy to find straightforward information on how exactly to get absentee ballots.

Drew | Age 21 | Berkeley, California | Last Voted: 2016

I feel like the Democratic Party doesn't really stand for the things I believe in anymore. Why should I vote for a party that doesn't really do anything for me as a voter? Millennials don't vote because a lot of politicians are appealing to older voters. We deserve politicians that are willing to do stuff for our future instead of catering to people who will not be here for our future. I'm a poli-sci major, so talking about politics is a daily thing for me. Half of the people I talk to seem very into voting. The other half are people who, like me, don't really feel represented. The only thing they choose to vote in is local elections.

Laura | Age 21 | Orlando, Florida | Has Never Voted

In high school, I didn't even know our vice-president's name was Joe Biden. All my high-school classmates were Republicans. They were very vocal about it, especially during the whole Romney-and-Obama election. I realized I didn't believe everything they were saying. Then I Googled "Republican versus Democrat," and I like kinda both, kinda not. That's why I'm an Independent. It wasn't till the Trump-versus-Hillary election that I realized how important it is to vote. Maybe it had to do with, like, society and all. Everyone I was following was like, "Go out to vote." I was in college in Massachusetts. I decided that I wasn't gonna go through that long process for an out-of-state student to register to vote. I had a hectic schedule. I just didn't have the time and energy. Also I didn't know how my parents would feel about that whole thing, 'cause my brother does not vote either. So it wasn't asked if they could help us out with the registration and mailing all the forms to us. My mom is a Republican, my dad is a Democrat, and I did not learn that until the 2016 election, after begging them to tell me at least what their party was.

I realized that I should've voted afterward. Ever since that election,
I started turning on not just CNN but also Fox News on the iPhone news app. I plan to vote in 2020. I have a goal set to know more about politics by that time.

Aaron | Age 25 | Atlanta, Georgia | Last Voted: 2016

I volunteered for Bernie Sanders. I went to many rallies, I was at the first presidential debate in Las Vegas. But when he folded, then immediately went and defended Hillary, a person who he's been campaigning against for 18 months, that just really killed it for me. I just have no respect for that. It's the same thing on the other side. Look at Ted Cruz, who's spent his last two years being made fun of by Donald Trump, and then we see Trump saying Cruz is the right guy in Texas to go against Beto O'Rourke. It's just so much political theater, and it really just turned me off entirely.

I wasn't planning to vote in 2016. I was with my mom, we were at Albertsons grocery store around the corner from my house, and they were in there voting. My mom voted, and it took her literally ten seconds. She said, "You should do it," and I said, "I don't know, I don't really think I want to." And she was like, "Aaron, it just took a minute." So I said, "Okay, fine." I just voted for Hillary. I felt bad about it for two years.

I look at it this way: That report just came out the other day about global warming, talking about how we have 12 years, until 2030, for this radical change unlike the world has ever seen. And The Hill newspaper just put out that article about how the DNC does not plan on making climate change a big part of their platform, even still. I just do not understand why I would vote for a party that doesn't care about me in any way. They can say, "Sure, we'll lower student interest rates." Well, I don't give a shit about student interest rates if I'm not going to live past 13 more years on this planet. Everyone on Twitter can be like, "Oh, we need the Democratic Senate to pack the courts." But have they watched the Democratic Party at any time during my lifetime? They have not done anything. Like, they don't stand for anything. And I just don't see the point anymore.

There are people that are exciting. Bernie was exciting, Cynthia [Nixon] was exciting, and Alexandria [Ocasio-Cortez] is exciting. So would I vote in the future? I don't know. If somebody came along that was exciting like that? Yeah. Probably.

Anna | Age 21 | New York, New York | Has Never Voted

I'm trying to register in my hometown of Austin, Texas. It's such a tedious process to even get registered in Texas, let alone vote as an absentee. There's no notification service about the status of my voter registration. There's a small, outdated website where you can enter your information and check. When I was at the post office to register, this poor girl, clearly also a college student like me, didn't know what "postmarked" meant and had no idea how to send an important document by mail. Most people my age have zero need to go to the post office and may have never stepped into one before. Honestly, if someone had the forms printed for me and was willing to deal with the post office, I'd be much more inclined to vote.

Thomas | Age 28 | New York, New York | Last Voted: September 2018, New York Democratic Primary

I vote when I feel like I have to. But I mostly consider it something that sucks a lot of people's time and energy away from actually building power with the people around them.

New York especially has a pretty vibrant tenant-organizing scene. You see organizing around community gardens, around people protesting new development going in, people working against rezoning. Regardless of the outcome of those things, I think people leave with a sense of empowerment. You might have failed this fight, but now you know your neighbor. Now you have a whole network you can call up the next time this happens. But if you lose an election, or the candidate you're pushing loses, then what do you have after that? You have this kind of despair for the next two or four or whatever years.

If we get to a blue wave in the midterms and then things just continue on, people will feel deflated and check out. Which is why I think you've got to have something besides just strategic voting, or people resigning themselves to a candidate they don't love but who is at least a Democrat.

In 2008, I was extremely enthusiastic to vote for Barack Obama. But over the years, I started to understand the electoral system as exactly how I've characterized it. For a while, I thought it was an immoral act to vote. It means that we're giving our approval to a system that I totally do not want to validate. Over the years, I've started to think maybe we don't have to frame this so much as an individual act with these moral consequences and that I need to stop being so dramatic about it. So, for instance, I voted for Cynthia Nixon in the primary recently. I teach at CUNY. Insofar as she was in a position where she could have been elected and made a difference in this, yes, I'll take the five minutes out of my day to go vote. But it's not something that we should, as a society, be making the horizon of our political organizing.

My polling place is at the end of my block. It takes no time at all; it's an extremely easy process. But I think that's also what makes it seem sort of alienating and anticlimactic. You go in and you're like, "This is the climax of democracy," like, the sticker on my chest is the climax of democracy.

Jocelyn | Age 27 | Arlington, Massachusetts | Last Voted: 2016

It was easier to get my medical-marijuana card - not a right, or even federally legal - than it was to register to vote. Massachusetts had online registration but only if you have a DMV-issued ID. I don't drive, so I was like, okay, I can register in person, but I'm also dealing with a chronic illness. Every day is a guessing game: Am I going to feel up to doing anything today? I put it off. The week before the deadline, I ended up being really sick and I wasn't able to leave home. You can send in your registration by mail, but I didn't have stamps. I kept thinking that I shouldn't have to jump through this many hoops to register. Back in July, I'd gotten a medical-marijuana card to treat my chronic illness. The entire thing is done online - it's the same requirements as registering to vote.

Maria | Age 26 | Conway, Arkansas | Last Voted: 2012

Growing up, going to Catholic school, everything we learned had a skew on it. Whenever we were taught about voting or political issues, it was not about learning the issues and matching what you feel personally, it was, "This is what the Catholic Church teaches, and this is how you should vote or you're wrong." I think that shaped me to hate politics and not want to be involved.

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12 Young People on Why They Probably Won't Vote

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Only a third of Americans ages 18 to 29 say they will cast a ballot next month in the 2018 Midterms. Here, we ask why.

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in an article it talks about a girl who talks about the real reason she does not vot and one of the big issues was that she had other,funner, things to do rather than standing in a line to vote for the president.

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Young people are not voting because they think since they are younger their vote doesn´t really count.
In 2016, only 19% of people aged 18-29 cast their ballot in the presidential election; at 49%, 45-64-year-olds accounted for the largest electorate last year.
https://www.thebestcolleges.org/9-reasons-we-need-young-voters-more-than-ever/

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In the 2014 congressional elections, there was the lowest voter turnout than there had been in 40 years; only 19.9% of 18 - 35 year olds votes, while 46% had said that they registered to vote.

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The US Census recently released the data from its November 2014 voting survey (the Current Population Supplement, or CPS). According to our analysis of the CPS, 19.9 percent of 18- to 29-years old cast ballots in the 2014 elections.[1] This was the lowest rate of youth turnout recorded in the CPS in the past forty years, and the decline since 2010 was not trivial. The proportion of young people who said that they were registered to vote (46.7%) was also the lowest over the past forty years.

Although we cannot precisely explain the reasons for these declines, several hypotheses deserve attention because they imply the need to change the way campaigns are run:

1. Since 2010, many states have made both registration and the act of voting less convenient or, indeed, quite difficult for some eligible young voters. States have implemented photo ID requirements with restrictive lists of acceptable identification, have shortened voting times, and have repealed laws that had allowed people to register on the same day they voted. Our own research shows that these changes are associated with lower youth turnout.

2. The Center for Responsive Politics estimates that $3.8 billion was spent on the 2014 congressional elections, a significant increase compared to previous congressional elections that some have attributed to the 2010 Citizens United decision. Apparently this money is not being used to mobilize youth. Young voters may be missed by television advertisements and canvassing efforts that target older people, or else the advertising may actually alienate them.

3. The proportion of young people who are contacted by campaigns may be shrinking, both because of a remarkable lack of competitive races and also because of increasingly sophisticated use of "Big Data" to target only likely voters and swing voters. Youth turnout by state differs dramatically. In 2014 turnout was higher in Colorado and Louisiana (both saw 31% youth turnout) where there were competitive statewide races, compared to the likes of New Jersey and Texas where Senate candidates were relatively "safe" and youth turnout was 15%. In fact, we found that just one in ten young people saw two competitive statewide races (governor and senate) in their states. Competitiveness of a state race was associated with greater turnout; the aggregate turnout of young people living in states with competitive races was 6.6 points higher than those living in states where the statewide races were not competitive (see Figure below). Research shows that young people who are contacted about a campaign are more likely to vote, but as the campaign "battleground" shrinks, fewer young people may be contacted.

4. Signs point to the increasing importance of money and analytics in campaigns, instead of grassroots volunteering, in elections like 2014. In 2008, 4.5% of respondents between the ages of 18 and 24 told the American National Election Study that they had worked for a party or candidate. That was a large number and many of those youth may have engaged their peers. Research on youth engagement generally finds that engaging youth in real work can affect motivation and facilitate peer-to-peer outreach.

5. There is no evidence that either party has a message or agenda that has deep resonance among young people.

Although 2014 saw the lowest turnout, and the decline since 2006 is notable, similar rates had been recorded in several previous midterm years. Presidential election years, such as 2016, have always seen youth turnout rates rise to about twice as high, if not higher.

The two most recent midterm elections have also seen a decline in youth voter registration compared to the previous election cycle. The proportion of young people who said that they were registered to vote (46.7%) was lowest over the past forty years among 18- to-29-year olds. This is a concern for many reasons, but especially because it reduces the likelihood of outreach.

In 2014, 12.4 million young people were "under-mobilized," in the sense that they registered but did not cast a ballot. This number represents 57.4% of the young people who were registered. The 2014 election failed to engage these young people who had taken an important step toward voting. See CIRCLE's, Fact Sheet for more details on why young people say they register but fail to vote.
The importance of outreach
If campaigns are interested in mobilizing likely supporters among youth, they might just need to talk to them. In fact, campaign outreach to 18- to-24 year olds has varied greatly over the past 40 years, according to CIRCLE's analysis of the American National Election Studies data. The trendline for party contact generally tracks well with turnout among 18-to-24 year olds in presidential elections. The only major disparity was in 1992, when turnout peaked but contact did not, which could have had something to do with the overall high turnout in that cycle. We do not know the rate of campaign contact in 2014, but it may have been low.

In 2012, youth who reported being contacted by a campaign were 1.4 times more likely to vote than peers who were not contacted by a campaign, according to a post-election survey of 18-to-24 year olds conducted by CIRCLE. In total, one quarter of young people were contacted by a campaign in the 2012 election cycle. Wealthier and more formally educated youth were more likely to be contacted by campaigns in 2012, while Black and Hispanic youth were less likely to be contacted than White youth.

Look for more analysis from CIRCLE in the coming months about youth, political attitudes and participation and the 2016 election cycle. Sign up for our E-Update to receive monthly links and summaries of CIRCLE's most recent analyses.

[1] CIRCLE had provided a similar estimate (21.5%) based on exit polls immediately after the 2014 election, although we did not find a decline relative to 2014. We recommend using the CPS data now that it is available, although it is a survey with a margin of error and it suffers from other sources of bias (such as self-reporting of whether a person voted).

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2014 Youth Turnout and Youth Registration Rates Lowest Ever Recorded; Changes Essential in 2016

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The US Census recently released the data from its November 2014 voting survey (the Current Population Supplement, or CPS). According to our analysis of the CPS, 19.9 percent of 18- to 29-years old cast ballots in the 2014 elections.[1] This was the lowest rate of youth turnout recorded in the CPS in the past forty years, and the decline since 2010 was not trivial.

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analysis has emphasized the demographic and ideological heterogeneity of Millennials, contradicting facile generalizations that characterize them as the “Obama generation.” In particular, there are regularly stark differences in ideology and issue positions among Millennials of different races, genders, and socioeconomic status.

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- they might not feel their beliefs are represented by elected officials in their district
-they may think their vote can't make a difference in the way government is run
-just don't support any candidate on a given ballot

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Mike Segar/Reuters
Voter turnout in the US is often criticized for being dismally low - and indeed, a significant portion of Americans don't go to the polls. When measuring votes cast as a percentage of the estimated voting-age population, the US ranks 31st among the 35 OECD countries. In 2012, just 53.6% of the population voted in the presidential election.

There are a myriad of reasons why people choose not to vote - they might not feel their beliefs are represented by elected officials in their district, they may think their vote can't make a difference in the way government is run, or perhaps just don't support any candidate on a given ballot.

Fixing those issues is an extremely complicated and complex proposition. But according to designers, there are a host of smaller, less policy-oriented ways to make the voting booth more pleasant, accessible, and desirable on election day. Business Insider asked four designers what changes they'd make to increase voter turnout.

Here are some of their ideas.

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11 ways to get more people to vote, according to designers

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Voter turnout in the US is often criticized for being dismally low - and indeed, a significant portion of Americans don't go to the polls. When measuring votes cast as a percentage of the estimated voting-age population, the US ranks 31st among the 35 OECD countries.

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analysis has emphasized the demographic and ideological heterogeneity of Millennials, contradicting facile generalizations that characterize them as the “Obama generation.” In particular, there are regularly stark differences in ideology and issue positions among Millennials of different races, genders, and socioeconomic status.

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The he preeminent youth research organization at Tufts University-this morning released an analysis of 2016 exit poll data in historical context. As in the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) -t poll that we conducted before the election, we continue to see big differences among young people depending on their race and ethnicity.

This is part of a continued series by CIRCLE of national electoral results. Stay tuned for more demographic analysis for the presidential election and down-ballot races.

Youth presidential Vote Choice

Our pre-election poll of Millennials ages 18-34 had Clinton 49% vs. Trump 28%, a 21-point preference for the Democratic candidate. The National Exit Poll suggests that the actual split in the election was 55% for Clinton to 37% for Trump (an 18-point gap) among youth aged 18-29.

Throughout the election season, our analysis has emphasized the demographic and ideological heterogeneity of Millennials, contradicting facile generalizations that characterize them as the "Obama generation." In particular, there are regularly stark differences in ideology and issue positions among Millennials of different races, genders, and socioeconomic status.

Nationally, compared to 2012, youth support for Republicans remained relatively constant among Whites (-3 points), African Americans (+1 point), and Latinos (+1 point). The national exit poll suggests that there were more youth in 2016 who supported a third-party candidate, did not vote for a presidential candidate, or specifically chose not to answer this poll question. White youth have been markedly less likely than youth of color to support Democratic candidates. This year, 43% of young Whites voted for Clinton, while Black youth supported her by almost double that margin (83%). However, it's worth noting that young African Americans were notably less likely to support Clinton in 2016 (83%) than Obama in 2012 (91%).

Twenty-eight states had exit polls during the 2016 general election-primarily the most populous and most competitive states. Two of those states didn't report presidential vote choice by age. Among the remaining 26 states, Trump won young voters in four states (Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, and Utah) and two saw a tie in youth support between the candidates (Indiana and Iowa), while . The youth support margins varied state-by-state, sometimes wildly. In South Carolina the exit poll estimates that youth support for Trump was 43% and 42% for Clinton; in Kentucky, Trump garnered 59% of youth votes while Clinton received 34%. Secretary Clinton won young voters in the other 20 states, and in ten of them by over 20 points.

Youth Affect Presidential Competitiveness in Key States

Our analysis of margin of victory in relation to estimated youth turnout and choice revealed that young voters played an important role in keeping some key races very close. If it were not for young voters' support for Hillary Clinton, electoral college votes in Michigan, New Hampshire, and Nevada would have gone more decisively to Donald Trump. Michigan and New Hampshire are currently too close to call in part because of the edge that young voters gave Clinton in those states.

In Nevada, Hillary Clinton won by an estimated 26,000 votes. Youth decisively favored Clinton in Nevada (52% to 35%), and this resulted in a net gain of 35,000 votes for Clinton. If young people had voted in equal number for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Clinton's victory would have been by an even narrower margin of less than 10,000 votes.

In Michigan, which has not been called yet, young voters' decisive support has played a major role in keeping the race close. Currently, Donald Trump is leading Hillary Clinton by about 12,000 votes, but youth favored Hillary Clinton by over 232,000 votes (57% to 34%). If young voters' support for her was even slightly less decisive, Donald Trump would have won the state handily.

In New Hampshire, where the vote is also too close to call with just about 1,400 votes separating Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, young voters also gave the Democratic candidate a boost. Youth gave Clinton a net of 12,000 by favoring her 49% to 41%, and if young people had chosen instead to split their votes equally between Trump and Clinton, she would currently be behind by almost 5,000 votes. In New Hampshire, young voters were the only group that gave a significant edge to Clinton.

"In 2016, young voters were a substantial voting bloc and they influenced the outcome, although a majority of them ended up on the losing side of the presidential race," said CIRCLE director Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg. "Young voters supported Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates more than any other age group did. However, they are a heterogeneous generation, and their choices differed greatly depending on their own race, their state, and other factors."

"Turnout" is the percentage of age-eligible citizens who voted, and we define "youth voter turnout" in this instance is the percentage of eligible 18 to 29-year-olds who voted. CIRCLE's preliminary turnout estimate uses data from the National Exit Polls conducted by Edison/Mitofsky, the number of ballots cast in the United States (aggregated from data provided by local election officials), and current Census data on the number of young citizens in the United States.

As of this writing (noon on November 9, 2016), an estimated 23.7 million young voters participated in the 2016 presidential election, which is 50% of citizens aged 18-29 in the United States. We estimate that 13 million youth voted for Secretary Clinton and almost 9 million youth voted for Donald Trump. An additional 2 million young people either voted for third-party candidates or chose not to vote for any of the Presidential candidates on the ballot.

CIRCLE estimates youth voting after elections based on several variables, including the total number of ballots counted and the exit polls. These variables are subject to change in the hours and days after an election. In several states, less than 95% of precincts have reported their votes. Also, in some past years, the National Exit Polls (NEP) conducted by Edison Research have adjusted their statistics in the first few days after an election.

While we produced a preliminary national turnout estimate of 50% based on best-available data, it is vital to note that there can be dramatic differences in youth voter turnout by state.

By another measure of youth participation, the proportion of all votes cast by young people, in most of the 28 states where exit polls were conducted youth made up an equal or larger share of the electorate than senior citizens: higher in 14 states, and tied in three.
Note: No national official count of voters by age is immediately available after an election. Therefore, any statistic on youth voter turnout is an estimate based on survey data. Like any survey, the National Exit Poll uses methods that may introduce sampling bias. In past years, our estimates of youth turnout from the National Exit Poll (shown above) have produced a trend that very closely tracks the turnout trend in the Census Current Population Survey (CPS), which is the other major source for estimating youth turnout once it is released in the Spring. These estimates diverged slightly in 2012, although both showed a decrease. A third source of youth voting data is national voter files, which are based on aggregated state files available in the new year. Estimates based on this source tend to be underestimates, since not all states keep comprehensive age data. A lack of reliable data for years before 2012 also means that national trends are not currently available.

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CIRCLE " An Estimated 24 Million Young People Voted in 2016 Election

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The he preeminent youth research organization at Tufts University-this morning released an analysis of 2016 exit poll data in historical context. As in the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) -t poll that we conducted before the election, we continue to see big differences among young people depending on their race and ethnicity.

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Campaigns tend not to focus on issues that affect younger people because they don’t think they will vote. This, in turn, gives younger people less incentive to actually vote. It’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. https://ww2.kqed.org/education/2018/11/16/how-can-we-get-more-young-people-to-vote/  “How Can We Get More Young People to Vote?” By Annelise Wunderlich NOVEMBER 16, 2018

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According to this article, it says the the registration of voting is very confusing to young voters. If you are going to teach about the importance of voting, what if you taught how to register and the actual process of voting and gaining knowledge on the candidates?

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Young supporters listened to former President Barack Obama speak at a rally in Las Vegas last month. Credit... Joe Buglewicz for The New York Times

Today, the question seems almost quaint: If young people could vote, would they?

But in the early 1970s, the answer was hardly obvious. The 26th Amendment had just lowered the voting age to 18. Young people were agitated and engaged after a decade of social and cultural upheaval. Here was their chance to put that disaffection to work.

"We will gain a group of enthusiastic, sensitive, idealistic and vigorous new voters," Senator Edward M. Kennedy said at the time.

Despite his convictions, this much has become clear: Mr. Kennedy was wrong.

Not only is the turnout rate for young people typically far lower than the turnout rate over all, it also historically lags that of other age groups. Midterm elections have been especially disappointing. In 2014, less than 20 percent of young people voted - the lowest rate ever - compared with roughly 40 percent of the general population, according to United States census data.

That trend line is unlikely to change significantly next week, but there are some positive signs for Democrats, who tend to attract young voters more than do Republicans.

Registration among young people is up. Some recent polls have found that more young people say they plan to vote this year than in the last two midterm elections; one released on this week by the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School found that four out of 10 adults under 30 said they would "definitely vote" - which could herald the highest voter turnout rate for young people in decades.

Still, young people have failed to meet expectations in the past, even when they have appeared unusually enthusiastic.

"Young people have a pretty bad reputation when it comes to turning out reliably in high numbers," said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, the director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, which studies youth turnout. "Especially in the midterms."

Generally, when political analysts say "young people," they are talking about 18- to 29-year-olds. Sometimes, they are talking about 18- to 24-year-olds. Other times, they are talking about millennials, generally defined as those born from 1982 to 2000. There is a tendency to think "young people" are in college, but many are not. Some are still in high school. Some work. Some are getting graduate degrees. Some are not pursuing higher education at all.

That is all to say: "Young people" are not a monolithic entity.

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Voting can be logistically confusing for young people who haven't done it before. Here, students walked near an early voting site on the Florida International University campus. Credit... Lynne Sladky/Associated Press

Lots of reasons.

Voting - and registering to vote - can be logistically confusing, especially for young voters who are often doing both for the first time.

Indeed, young people who are unfamiliar with the process often have no idea what to expect.

"The first two times I actually tried to show up at the polls, I was very surprised they didn't ask for my ID," said Adam Strong, who is from rural Kentucky and is now a civic engagement liaison for the national organization Opportunity Youth United.

Young people also move a lot, so even if they have registered to vote, they often need to remember to update their addresses.

For college students who want to vote where they attend college, even registering at their new address might not be enough: The governor of New Hampshire recently signed a law that required people to be residents in the state to vote, a stipulation that would affect its population of out-of-state college students. (A judge ruled last week that the state could not enforce new voting requirements during the midterms.)

Beyond the legal and bureaucratic hurdles, there are other barriers that disproportionately affect young people. In more urban areas, young people may not have driver's licenses, which can deter them from voting if they think they need one, or actually prevent them from voting if their state's laws require them to present photo identification at the polls.

Then there is simple psychology.

"When young people feel like their vote doesn't matter," Dr. Kawashima-Ginsberg said, "they don't vote."

Lots of things.

Gun control (especially this year, because of the shooting in Parkland, Fla., in February); women's reproductive rights (especially this year, because of the shifting makeup of the Supreme Court); climate change (especially this year, because of recent reports on global warming); police brutality (especially this year because ... you get it).

"For young people, it's always been about the issues," said Sarah Audelo, the executive director of Alliance for Youth Action, an organization that targets young voters.

And this year, there are a lot of them. There is also, of course, President Trump, who is his own kind of motivator for young voters. Only 26 percent of young Americans approve of the job Mr. Trump is doing, according to Harvard's recent poll, with 59 percent saying they "will never" vote for him.

Canvassers with Care in Action get organized in Lilburn, Ga. Since the 2016 election, organizations have been trying to get young voters to the polls. Credit... Audra Melton for The New York Times

Since 2016, organizations have been out in full force trying to talk to young voters, register them and get them to the polls.

Rock the Vote - the nonpartisan group most widely credited with increasing the youth vote in the early 1990s - has introduced a "Democracy Class" for high school students with the goal of registering, or pre-registering, young voters before the midterms. Groups like DoSomething.org are sending text messages about the election to young people. The Big Ten football conference is competing to see which school can get more students to vote in the midterms.

Planned Parenthood Votes, Tom Steyer's NextGen America and the Alliance for Youth Action announced last week that they would "invest six figures" to distribute voter guides before Election Day to more than two million young voters in 19 states, including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Mr. Steyer himself, through NextGen America, reportedly plans to spend more than $4 million on digital ads aimed at young voters.

Nearly 60 percent of millennial voters identify as or lean Democratic, but a youth wave does not equal a blue wave. Credit... Tom Brenner/The New York Times

Not necessarily.

But there are reasons Democrats want young people to vote.

Nearly 60 percent of voters ages 18 to 25 identify as Democrats or lean Democratic, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Two-thirds of likely young voters in Harvard's recent poll said they wanted Democrats to control Congress.

A recent survey from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts, however, suggests that young people are less likely to identify with a political party, with one-third saying they identify as independents.

Maybe! Or maybe not.

Harvard's poll provided fresh signals that young people could influence the midterm elections more than usual, with 40 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds saying they were likely to vote on Tuesday. That number is higher than it was earlier this year, when the institute released its spring poll, and much higher than it was before the 2014 elections, when only 26 percent of voters under 30 said they would definitely vote.

And the recent poll from the civic learning center at Tufts found that 34 percent of people age 18 to 24 were "extremely likely" to vote, a rate that it said came "close to the levels of engagement seen in the 2016 presidential election."

Michael McDonald, an associate professor of political science at the University of Florida who compiles early-voting data, said the signs of increased turnout among the young were "modest" and noted that with higher than usual turnout expected over all, "it just makes sense that we are going to see more young people in the mix."

Another thing worth keeping in mind: The turnout rate for young people hovers around 20 to 25 percent in midterm elections. Even if it is higher this year, it will still almost certainly be relatively low.

A final thing to remember: Higher youth turnout is a perennial pre-election prediction, but one that often falls flat.

For "a large chunk of young people," said Dr. Kawashima-Ginsberg of Tufts, "voting isn't really high on their priority list."

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Young Voters Could Make a Difference. Will They?

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Today, the question seems almost quaint: If young people could vote, would they? But in the early 1970s, the answer was hardly obvious. The 26th Amendment had just lowered the voting age to 18. Young people were agitated and engaged after a decade of social and cultural upheaval.

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Something we can do to increase voting from young people is make government teachers talk more politics and talk more about voting. Teachers should stress the importance of voting and make sure kids know what to do and how to vote.

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Millennials and Generation Xers cast 69.6 million votes in the 2016 general election, a slight majority of the 137.5 million total votes cast,

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Millennials and Generation Xers cast 69.6 million votes in the 2016 general election, a slight majority of the 137.5 million total votes cast

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Baby Boomers and other older Americans are no longer the majority of voters in U.S. presidential elections.

Millennials and Generation Xers cast 69.6 million votes in the 2016 general election, a slight majority of the 137.5 million total votes cast, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data. Meanwhile, Boomers and older voters represented fewer than half of all votes for the first time in decades. The shift has occurred as Millennials accounted for a growing share of the electorate and as those in the Silent and Greatest generations aged and died.

Millennials (those ages 18 to 35 in 2016) reported casting 34 million votes last November, a steep rise from the 18.4 million votes they cast in 2008. But, despite the larger size of the Millennial generation, the Millennial vote has yet to eclipse the Gen X vote, as 35.7 million Gen Xers (ages 36 to 51 in 2016) reported voting last year.

It is likely, though not certain, that the size of the Millennial vote will surpass the Gen X vote in the 2020 presidential election. The Millennial generation as a whole is larger than Gen X (both in absolute size and in the number of birth years it spans). In addition, the ranks of the nation's Millennials are growing faster than older generations due to immigration, which is likely to be accompanied by increased naturalizations. As a result, Millennials are likely to be the only adult generation whose number of eligible voters will appreciably increase in the coming years.

In addition, while voter turnout is difficult to predict, the general pattern is that as a generation ages its turnout rate more closely matches that of the next older generation. Consequently, the difference in turnout between Millennials and Gen Xers is expected to narrow in 2020 (63% of Gen X eligible voters reported voting in 2016, versus 49% of Millennials).

The ascendance of the Millennial vote is noteworthy because Millennials are more likely to be self-described independents, but they also are more Democratic than older generations in their political preferences. Among Millennials, 44% were independents in 2016, compared with 39% of Gen Xers and smaller shares of Boomers (31%) and members of the Silent Generation (23%). At the same time, Millennials lean to the Democratic Party to a much greater degree than other generations. In 2016, 55% of all Millennials identified as Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents, while just 33% identified as Republicans or GOP-leaning independents. By comparison, 49% in Generation X, 46% of Boomers and 43% of members in the Silent Generation identified with or leaned Democratic. And on issues such as marijuana legalization and same-sex marriage, Millennials take more liberal positions than those in older generations.

The growing Millennial vote is not the only reason that Boomers and other older generations are no longer the majority of voters. The 35.7 million votes Gen Xers cast in 2016 were the most ever cast by this generation. Generation X was the only generation whose voter turnout rate peaked in 2016. In addition, the number of Gen Xers eligible to vote was greater in 2016 than in prior presidential elections (again due to naturalizations).

The Baby Boomer vote peaked at 50.1 million votes in the 2004 election. With turnout stuck at 69% among this generation in presidential elections since 2004, the declining Boomer vote reflects the declining number of Boomers eligible to vote (due to death and emigration).

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Millennials, Gen Xers outvoted Boomers and older generations in 2016 election

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Baby Boomers and other older Americans are no longer the majority of voters in U.S. presidential elections. Millennials and Generation Xers cast 69.6 million votes in the 2016 general election, a slight majority of the 137.5 million total votes cast, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.

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The main reason young people aren´t voting is because of their parents. Young people just vote based on what their parents think and agree with instead of voting based on their beliefs or they just don´t vote at all because they´re parents vote.
https://www.studentpost.org/2017/12/why-young-people-arent-voting/

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- according to  Washington post young people don't vote because they are the “me generation,” stuck to their phones and uninterested in politics. Are they right?

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This shows that young voters (aged 18-29) have been among the lowest percentage of voter turnouts for a long time. This may be because young people are disinterested by politics and all the negative energy.  In this graph, it shows that the turnout for midterm elections is almost halved among young voters. I believe this is because many people don't know the importance of the midterm elections.

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in a way to get the younger people to vote, you have to get more adults to vote first. In the article, it says children are more likely to vote if their parents vote.

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As the 2018 midterm elections approach, there are renewed calls for increasing voter participation- especially of younger voters. However, voter turnout for U.S. midterm elections is notoriously low for all age groups, hovering between 36 to 40 percent for the voting eligible population. At 60 percent, turnout for presidential elections isn't much better.

Though civic organizations and politicians try to improve voter turnout-via advertising, early voting, vote-by-mail programs, "get out the vote" campaigns and voter registration efforts-some of these programs have been shown to be ineffective and to even exacerbate participation gaps.[1]

So why don't people vote, and how can we effectively get more people to the polls? In a new paper, my co-authors and I show that children who grow up in households that experience an increase in unearned income are more likely to vote as adults. This unearned income is a result of a governmental cash transfer program and we detail this in greater detail in the paper itself.

The paper builds off past research that suggests a strong relationship between parents' voting behaviors and that of their children. If your parents didn't vote, you don't vote. Research also suggests that there is a strong relationship between household incomes (or wealth) and voting in the U.S.[2] Simply put, poverty presents obstacles to voting and the poor vote proportionately less frequently than their richer counterparts[3].

What's surprising about our new research is that this relationship between parents' and children's voting behaviors is disrupted if household incomes are increased during adolescence. We find, in fact, that the children's probability of ever voting rises to that of their initially wealthier counterparts. We document that there is a causal impact of increasing household incomes on the long-run voting behavior of children from those households.

Effects on voting are largest for children from the bottom half of the initial income distribution

Using data from publicly available voting records in North Carolina (Great Smoky Mountain Study of Youth), we match voters in presidential and midterm Congressional election years from 2002 onward to voters' household incomes. In the first figure below we plot the difference in voting outcomes for the children that received the additional household income as compared to their untreated counterparts. We find that the children from the bottom half of the initial income distribution increase their voting by 10 to 20 percentage points as adults over a range of election years when compared to their counterparts; note that this increased likelihood of voting is on top of the baseline probability of ever voting of about 25 percent for this group. In the second figure below, we present the same comparison for children from households that received the cash transfers as well but were in households that were in the top half of the income distribution. The line in the figure hover around zero and indicates that there is no effect on voting for this population.

In results not shown here, we find that the relationship between children's voting behavior in the future is closely linked to their parents' prior voting behaviors. However, that relationship diminishes in size once the additional household income is considered. This means that the intergenerational transmission of voting behavior may be disrupted-at least for those in the bottom half of the income distribution-by an increase in household incomes.

No corresponding change exists for parents

In our study we can also test for whether the parents change their own voting behavior as a result of the increased household incomes. In the figure below, we present the differences in voting probability for the parents who receive the cash transfer as compared to their untreated counterparts over the pre-income increase period (prior to 1996) and the post-income increase period. The results indicate that there is no systematic impact on parental voting across these two groups.

The finding that household income affects the voting behavior of adolescents but not of adults suggests that voting behavior may be set quite early in life.

What can explain these results?

We have several potential explanations for our findings. First, with more resources during adolescence, children may be less likely to move or relocate during either childhood or adulthood. As a result, they invest more in their relationships and see a potential benefit to civic participation for a community that they care about. In other words, the increase in income may increase social capital. Second, the increase in household incomes seems to increase children's educational attainment. Both an increase in social capital and human capital would predict an increase in voting probabilities.

What does this imply for the electorate?

These results suggest that anti-poverty or income augmentation programs should be viewed as important to the democratic functioning of a country, especially because our results imply that the effects of income on voting are long-lived-creating an increase in voter turnout that's sustained over multiple elections.

By playing an important role in readying young people for their civic duties, programs aimed at boosting incomes and combatting poverty do more than provide direct health and family benefits. They may also play an important role in readying young people for civic duty-which is all the more reason to invest in them.

[1] Green, Donald P., Mary C. McGrath, and Peter M. Aronow. "Field experiments and the study of voter turnout." Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties 23, no. 1 (2013): 27-48

[2] Verba, Sidney, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady Voice and equality: Civic voluntarism in American politics. Harvard University Press, 1995

[3] See for instance, Ojeda, Christopher. "The Two Income-Participation Gaps." American Journal of Political Science (Forthcoming)

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How do we get more young people to vote as adults? Cash transfers to their parents could help

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As the 2018 midterm elections approach, there are renewed calls for increasing voter participation- especially of younger voters. However, voter turnout for U.S. midterm elections is notoriously low for all age groups, hovering between 36 to 40 percent for the voting eligible population. At 60 percent, turnout for presidential elections isn't much better.

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People are saying young adults aren't getting the knowledge to vote.
https://ysa.org/4-reasons-young-people-dont-vote-and-what-to-do-about-it/

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Another thing we can do is increase political awareness in youth because it is incredibly low. Many young voters don't use their votes because they don't educate themselves on their candidates, and they don't want to throw their vote away on someone they have little to no knowledge of.

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We brought a goat, a miniature goat onto campus, like a fainting goat, and it was - that was our vote goat. And so many folks stopped by just to pet the goat or play with the goat. And while we were there, we said, hey, you know you have already taken a minute. Do you have a second to register to vote?

And we registered over 100 people that day. So, that was really awesome.

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What would get young people to vote? These teens have some ideas

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We brought a goat, a miniature goat onto campus, like a fainting goat, and it was - that was our vote goat. And so many folks stopped by just to pet the goat or play with the goat. And while we were there, we said, hey, you know you have already taken a minute.

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What to blame or young people not voting.

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What to blame or young people not voting.

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According to Sunshine Hillygus, a political scientist at Duke University, says the main reasons that young people do not vote is due to high school civics classes are not emphasizing importance of voting, teachers often shy away from politics as not to offend anyone, and the voter registration laws are sometimes fluid (the preregistration laws such as in North Carolina but have been removed).

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If Taylor Swift's admonition to vote doesn't move the needle among young Americans this year, researchers at Duke can help explain why.

Students in a Bass Connections project are researching why so many young voters, even those who say they're politically motivated, often fail to turn out at the polls.

"It's always been pathetic," says Sunshine Hillygus, a political scientist at Duke who studies voter behavior and co-leads the Bass Connections project.

In 1972, the first year 18- to 20-year-olds were allowed to vote, 55 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds cast ballots. Only 43 percent of that age group voted in 2016 and just 16 percent turned out to vote in 2014.

Turnout among young voters is typically 20-30 percentage points lower than among older citizens. And youth turnout has never matched that of 1972, Hillygus says.

The low turnout among 18- to 29-year-olds has puzzled political scientists for decades. The Bass Connections project aims to both understand and find those missing pieces that can bolster the youth vote.
The Bass Connections Project
Specifically, this team is studying how reforming two key areas may help improve voter turnout among young people -- the education system and election administration.

The team is examining a mix of longitudinal student surveys, school administrative records and voter registration files, and testing the effects of voter registration and mobilization interventions developed by the team.

They are studying why only some electoral reforms work to mobilize young citizens, which may help reconcile what are often conflicting results in election sciences literature, Hillygus says.

The team is also continuing a partnership with the Wake County Public School System that includes annual surveys of students; contributions to a nationwide database of electoral and civics education policies in all states; and surveying and interviewing teachers to understand efforts in schools to increase civic participation.

Team members will present their results to the American Association of Public Opinion Researchers in May.
Reasons Young People Don't Vote
Hillygus, who is also working on a book about the subject, says some of the reasons behind the lackluster youth turnout include:

High school civics classes are not adequately preparing youth to understand the basic skills they need for the voting process. They learn how many justices are on the Supreme Court, for example, but not that they can still vote if they aren't familiar with candidates on the ballot for the local water district.

Teachers -- especially in today's polarized climate -- often shy away from discussing politics in the classroom to avoid stepping on potential landmines. "I think that's shirking their duties," Hillygus says. There are ways to have students talk about issues that aren't biased and schools are avoiding that."

The voter registration laws are sometimes fluid. In 2010, North Carolinians ages 16 and 17 could preregister to vote. When Election Day came in 2012, they were already in the system. But North Carolina lawmakers removed preregistration in 2013. The 4th U.S. Court of Appeals has since struck down the law, so reinstatement of it in 2016 should help alleviate some of the problem, Hillygus notes.

Youth also bear responsibility for their low turnout. Hillygus says young people often lack the "grit" to follow through with registering to vote, forgetting they need to register a certain amount of time before Election Day, for example.

She says one study found that 55 percent of college students "messed up filling out their voter registration form, e.g., they left a question blank or didn't know their Social Security number."

Options such as preregistration in high school and automatic registration can help ensure the youth vote improves, she says.

"Preregistration and automatic registration have such consequences for young people," Hillygus says. "Because follow-through is so much of the story, there's a real high cost to procrastination in U.S. democracy."

To further dig into the thinking of young voters, the Bass Connections project includes interviewing young people about their family history related to politics, what propelled them to vote (or not), as well as if and how they registered.

Carlee Goldberg, a freshman from Parkland, Florida, says the handful of people she's interviewed so far this month say they struggle to find good information about candidates.

"There's no one place to find that type information," says Goldberg, a political science major who hopes to become a judge in Florida, where judges are elected. "For a lot of students, when trying to vote and they have no clue who's on the ballot, it either discourages them from voting or they just start just randomly filling it in."

"Or when they don't know they just vote down party lines," adds sophomore Ryan Geitner, a Hickory, North Carolina, native majoring in political science and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.

Both Duke students agree that giving teens the ability to register before they're 18 and providing them more practical information in high school about how to navigate the election system would go a long way in motivating more young people.

"That first year in which you can vote, I think, is the most crucial," Goldberg says. "That's when it's the most exciting, that's where you're probably most likely to vote just because you can. But if you don't vote in that year, I think it's more difficult after that."

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If Taylor Swift's admonition to vote doesn't move the needle among young Americans this year, researchers at Duke can help explain why. Students in a Bass Connections project are researching why so many young voters, even those who say they're politically motivated, often fail to turn out at the polls.

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It says that young adults don't vote if their parents don't make them.
https://ysa.org/4-reasons-young-people-dont-vote-and-what-to-do-about-it/

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trump only won over 1/3 of the millennial's in the 2016 election

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On Thursday, November 17, Tufts University's Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) joined Brookings' Governance Studies to discuss the millennial vote in the...

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Preliminary results from ABC exit polls suggest that voters ages 18 to 29 will make up 13 percent of the overall electorate in this year’s midterms, up from 11 percent in 2014. While early voting across every age group increased compared with the 2014 midterms, the surge is most pronounced among voters ages 18 to 29. More than 3.3 million voters from that group cast their votes early. That’s a 188 percent increase from 2014, according to data from TargetSmart, a political-data-analysis firm.

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Chip Somodevilla / Getty

In the lead-up to the midterms, there has been a swell of appeals to the country's youngest voters. Survivors of the Parkland, Florida, shooting launched a nationwide voter-registration drive. Dozens of celebrities organized a live-streamed telethon aimed at directing young voters to the polls. In a rare political message, Taylor Swift, notably silent throughout the 2016 election, urged her 112 million Instagram followers to research their candidates and cast their vote.

It seems to be working.

Preliminary results from ABC exit polls suggest that voters ages 18 to 29 will make up 13 percent of the overall electorate in this year's midterms, up from 11 percent in 2014. While early voting across every age group increased compared with the 2014 midterms, the surge is most pronounced among voters ages 18 to 29. More than 3.3 million voters from that group cast their votes early. That's a 188 percent increase from 2014, according to data from TargetSmart, a political-data-analysis firm.
Read: Young people might actually turn out for the midterms
The spike in youth turnout in several key battleground states is particularly striking. In Texas, where young voters have rallied behind the Democratic Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke, early voting increased fivefold for voters ages 18 to 29, according to The Hill. It's the same story in Nevada, where there's another hotly contested Senate race: Five times as many young voters turned out early in 2018 as they did in 2014.

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In the lead-up to the midterms, there has been a swell of appeals to the country's youngest voters. Survivors of the Parkland, Florida, shooting launched a nationwide voter-registration drive. Dozens of celebrities organized a live-streamed telethon aimed at directing young voters to the polls.

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Young people don't vote because voting and registering to vote can be logistically confusing. Its an unfamiliar process and young people have no idea what to expect. May be difficult to vote because young people move alot so they will often need to update their address and some college students who move states have trouble because some states have laws where you are required to b a resident of the state to vote.

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- we know that 50% of eligible young people—about 24 million youth, ages 18-29—voted in the 2016 general election.
-https://civicyouth.org/quick-facts/youth-voting/
- according to Duke today High school civics classes are not adequately preparing youth to understand the basic skills they need for the voting process.
-https://today.duke.edu/2018/10/why-so-many-young-people-don%E2%80%99t-vote
- another reason young people don't vote is because if your parents don't vote you probably don't vote
-myself

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Midterm elections have been especially disappointing. In 2014, less than 20 percent of young people voted.

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Matthew McCormack & Clayton Grisham
We can create a law that fines those who don't vote/participate  like the system in current day Australia that requires voters to vote in national elections but not in local governments. If an individual does not vote then they are fined $20.

https://www.aec.gov.au/faqs/voting_australia.htm

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If young people barely understand the structure of government, the legislative process, or the first-past-the-post voting system, let alone the EU, then how can they be expected to engage with it? By not having politics on the curriculum, the government is failing to properly educate future voters.

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Young people don't vote. That's what we've been hearing in the aftermath of the EU referendum. Those members of Generation Y who did vote largely voted to remain - in the case of 18- to 24-year-olds, overwhelmingly so - and so the result, determined as it had been by mainly older voters who would not have to live so long with the consequences, enraged and saddened much of that cohort.

But it's our fault, we are told. We do not vote. We are lazy, and selfish, too busy Snapchatting pictures of our genitals to strangers. We can't be arsed, basically. This is a crisis of our own making. We shouldn't be blaming the boomers, but ourselves. Time to take responsibility, pull our socks up, and maybe get ourselves some national service.

Many of the people who made this argument cited a Skydata statistic that claimed turnout among 18- to 24-year-olds was a pathetic 36%. These figures were jumped on by those who wanted to beat young people with the stick of their own supposed apathy, but in fact the statistics were based on young people's uncertainty on turning out for the general election last year. Dr James Sloam, from the department of politics and international relations at Royal Holloway, told me that the actual turnout was much higher - his research estimates it at 62% using a YouGov survey of 18- to 30-year-olds co-commissioned by Bite the Ballot and Hope Not Hate, and adjusting for over-reporting. Over the weekend detailed polling put the figure at 64%. So it seems that young people turned out in much larger numbers than they did in last year's general election (where turnout was 43% among 18- to 34-year-olds), but, as Sloam explains, "were outnumbered by older voters who prioritised migration as an issue (especially the over-65s)".

So while political engagement among young people is not in as dire a state as commentators have suggested, there is clearly still some work to do if Generation Y, especially the younger section of it, is to hold political sway. Here are some measures that could ensure that happens:

1. Better political education in schools

If young people barely understand the structure of government, the legislative process, or the first-past-the-post voting system, let alone the EU, then how can they be expected to engage with it? By not having politics on the curriculum, the government is failing to properly educate future voters. Some argue citizenship classes in their current form are sufficient, but I certainly never found them useful, and Sloam tells me that none of his politics students did either. If young people lack confidence in their knowledge and understanding, then they are less likely to engage - hence the attitude of "I don't know enough to vote about this issue".

2. Improve critical media literacy

Younger voters told UKandEU that they experienced information overload, and struggled with biased reporting in the runup to the referendum. It's clear that we are not currently being taught in formal education to critically analyse the media that we are presented with in any meaningful way, hindering decision-making. Furthermore, if the bombardment of conflicting information in the run-up to the referendum taught us anything, it's that we don't have enough trusted media sources, rendering the current post-truth " don't trust the experts " narrative all the more terrifying.

3. Major constitutional reforms

It's time for proportional representation, where each vote counts. Our electoral system is not fit for purpose. Nor is the resultant model of party politics, which does little to engage young people in politics because we have so little political choice. Sloam contrasts the UK with Germany, where young people have a range of options, and so are less likely to feel that they are wasting their vote. Devolution of power to local areas could make young people feel less disconnected from politics.

4. Make voting compulsory

An option mired in controversy, but one that would certainly get young people into the ballot box.

5. Simplify voter registration

The new system has been a disaster, with millions of people, especially the peripatetic young, dropping off the register. Why not have same-day voter registration, as they do in some US states? Or online voting? And why not text young people to remind them to vote? A Demos/Vinspired report focused on last year's general election found 66% of young people were more likely to vote if they could do so online, and almost 40% were more likely to vote if they got a text reminder on the day. We also need more campaign groups such as Bite the Ballot and the Democratic Society to urge voters to sign up.

6. Weekend elections

And while we're at it, why not hold them in term time, when younger people are more likely to be at their addresses?

7. Return to a politics of ideology

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'Those that do act out of principle or ideology are mercilessly mocked by the press..' Jeremy Corbyn at the Durham miner's gala, July 2016. Photograph: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

Young people prefer issue-based politics to party politics, yet there are hardly any ideological politicians left, and those that do act out of principle or ideology are mercilessly mocked by the press.

8. Make the voting age 16

"I can't impress enough how young people's contact with representative democracy is crucial to their future engagement," Kelly McBride from the Democratic Society says. Plus, we know from the Scottish referendum that 16- and 17-year-olds are perfectly capable of involving themselves in important political decisions.

9. Improve trust in the system

Many young people feel let down by politicians, who they view as distant and unrelatable. When they do engage politically - whether formally (by, say, voting for the Lib Dems in 2010 because of their commitment not to raise tuition fees) or informally (by protesting against their broken promises) - they usually find themselves ignored; then, in a vicious circle, they stop turning out, so are ignored and so on. Younger people need to feel they are listened to and respected by politicians.

10. Have more people from diverse backgrounds in political positions

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'Mhairi Black has shown that youth is not a barrier to being a good politician.' Photograph: David Cheskin/PA

Mhairi Black has shown that youth is not a barrier to being a good politician, but we are still in desperate need of a more diverse politics when it comes to gender, race and class (according to Tune in Turn Out, 56% would be more likely to vote if there were more local working-class MPs).

11. More engagement from politicians

We need politicians who engage with the issues that matter to us, such as tuition fees, housing, living costs and jobs. Sloam suggests that each MP should commit to holding surgeries at every school and university in their constituencies over their five-year term.

12. Foster community stability

When your housing is precarious, your job is unstable, your youth centre is closed and your area is in economic decline, you're going to start feeling disconnected from your community, and that, in turn, makes you less likely to engage with politics.
Topics

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12 ways to get even more of Generation Y voting | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

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Young people don't vote. That's what we've been hearing in the aftermath of the EU referendum. Those members of Generation Y who did vote largely voted to remain - in the case of 18- to 24-year-olds, overwhelmingly so - and so the result, determined as it had been by mainly older voters who would not have to live so long with the consequences, enraged and saddened much of that cohort.

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What do we Know? Why young people are  not voting...

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What do we Know? Why young people are  not voting...

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In order to get more young people to vote, there are certain steps that we should be liable to take:  We can make classroom registration essential for older high school students, as well as college students. The biggest obstacle in voting for young adults is registering beforehand, as many forget this is a step that needs to be taken. It's also essential to encourage students to vote. Many households, as well as the government itself isn't pushing these young people to make a political difference.

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Analysis | How to get more college students to vote

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September 18, 2018 For months, signs have pointed to Democratic gains in the November midterm elections. But those gains also will depend on turning out Democratic voters. Among the challenges Democrats face: getting young voters to the polls. Younger voters lean toward the Democratic Party, on average, but their turnout typically drops in midterm elections more than that of older groups.

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the main four reasons younger people aren't voting is  They’re not asked or encouraged to vote by candidates, campaigns, family, friends, or neighbors.2 They’re not taught how the government and elections work or feel like they don’t know enough to vote.There are too many barriers for them to overcome They’re not interested in politics or feel like voting won’t make a difference.

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1. They're not asked or encouraged to vote by candidates, campaigns, family, friends, or neighbors.

Young people who are contacted by an organization or a campaign are more likely to vote. Additionally, those who discuss an election are more likely to vote in it. [5]

A young person's home environment can have a large impact on their engagement. Youth who live in a place where members of their household are engaged and vote are more likely to do so themselves. [5]

Young people are more often transient and so they often feel less invested in local elections. [5]

If young people don't vote, they're less likely to be targeted by political campaigns. Leaving young voters off contact lists is a costly mistake. Some campaigns still bypass young voters, but research shows they respond when contacted. The most effective way of getting a new voter is the in-person door-knock by a peer; the least effective is an automated phone call. [5]

Research has consistently shown that contact by political campaigns is effective in engaging young people and driving voter turnout. This contact is particularly critical in civic deserts, where young people are less likely to vote than their peers in places where they perceive higher access to civic opportunities. [6]

What To Do About It: Focus on civic engagement, elections, and voting with all youth in your programs - even those too young to vote - and encourage them them research, discuss, and connect with local candidates.

2. They're not taught how the government and elections work or feel like they don't know enough to vote.

Whenever young people are surveyed, there is a significant lack of knowledge about how exactly the government works, and, therefore, how their vote actually matters- nearly 20 percent of young people said they don't think they know enough to be able to vote. [3]

Having information about how, when and where to vote can help young people be and feel prepared to vote as well as reduce any level of intimidation they may feel. [5]

They haven't learned how to register to vote. They haven't learned the best way to influence their elected representatives. They haven't learned that they have power. A healthy democracy needs well-informed, active citizens. But these citizens don't just magically appear. People learn citizenship. They learn it, for example, as children when they go the polling place to watch their parents vote. They learn it advocating for an issue they care about with their neighbors. They learn it by doing it. [4]

College graduates are more likely to look for information about politics. And they are more likely to have friends who vote. People without a college degree, he says, are less likely to seek out political information. They also are less likely to have friends who care about politics or talk about voting. [2]

What To Do About It: Teach young people how to register and vote - and help them learn and practice these behaviors before they turn 18. Help them learn about the issues and encourage them to share what they learn with others.

3. There are too many barriers for them to overcome.

Too busy or had a conflict on Election Day / couldn't afford to spend time in long line; lack of transportation; inconvenient hours or location of polling place / trouble locating their polling place; registration problems / lacking proper ID; or being out of town / did not receive an absentee ballot in time to vote. [1]

Among youth 18 and 19 years old who were not registered to vote, 23% said they missed the registration deadlines, 6% said they didn't know where or how to register. [6]

Young people who are registered to vote turn out in high numbers. In the 2008 election, 84% of those youth 18-29 who were registered to vote actually cast a ballot. Guiding youth through the registration process is one potential step to closing the age-related voting gap. [5]

A state's laws related to voter registration and voting can have an impact on youth voter turnout. Seven out of the top 10 youth turnout states had some of the more ambitious measures, including Election Day registration, voting by mail (Oregon), or not requiring registration to vote (North Dakota). [5]

Many would-be voters face a range of barriers: voter ID laws, registration difficulty, or criminal records. [3]

What To Do About It: Ask the young people you work with if there's any reason they wouldn't be able to vote if they wanted to, and focus your voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts on addressing those barriers.

4. They're not interested in politics or feel like voting won't make a difference.

They don't like the candidates or the issues. [1]

Some are apathetic or too busy. Others don't like their choices, they don't think their vote matters, or they think the system is corrupt. [3]

A majority of young people don't think voting is an effective way to change society. [3]

Over a third (38%) of non-voters indicated they were not interested in the election or not involved in politics. [6]

What To Do About It: This might be the toughest reason to overcome. In the short term, we encourage you to help young people discover why politics and voting matters by showing them how the issues they volunteer to help fix also need to be addressed through policy to truly solve the problem. Long term, engaging them in advocacy for policies that make it easier to vote, or for campaign finance or gerrymandering reform could help them feel invested in changing the system.
Sources
[1] https://civicyouth.org/why-youth-dont-vote-differences-by-race-and-education/

[2] https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/4-reasons-why-many-people-dont-vote

[3] https://www.npr.org/2018/09/10/645223716/on-the-sidelines-of-democracy-exploring-why-so-many-americans-dont-vote

[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/09/20/many-young-people-dont-vote-because-they-never-learned-how-heres-free-class-now-schools-trying-change-that/

[5] https://civicyouth.org/quick-facts/youth-voting/#2

[6] https://civicyouth.org/teens-and-elections/?cat_id=6

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4 Reasons Young People Don't Vote... and What To Do About It

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Young people who are contacted by an organization or a campaign are more likely to vote. Additionally, those who discuss an election are more likely to vote in it. [5] A young person's home environment can have a large impact on their engagement.

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As of this writing (noon on November 9, 2016), an estimated 23.7 million young voters participated in the 2016 presidential election, which is 50% of citizens aged 18-29 in the United States.

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The he preeminent youth research organization at Tufts University-this morning released an analysis of 2016 exit poll data in historical context. As in the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) -t poll that we conducted before the election, we continue to see big differences among young people depending on their race and ethnicity.

This is part of a continued series by CIRCLE of national electoral results. Stay tuned for more demographic analysis for the presidential election and down-ballot races.

Youth presidential Vote Choice

Our pre-election poll of Millennials ages 18-34 had Clinton 49% vs. Trump 28%, a 21-point preference for the Democratic candidate. The National Exit Poll suggests that the actual split in the election was 55% for Clinton to 37% for Trump (an 18-point gap) among youth aged 18-29.

Throughout the election season, our analysis has emphasized the demographic and ideological heterogeneity of Millennials, contradicting facile generalizations that characterize them as the "Obama generation." In particular, there are regularly stark differences in ideology and issue positions among Millennials of different races, genders, and socioeconomic status.

Nationally, compared to 2012, youth support for Republicans remained relatively constant among Whites (-3 points), African Americans (+1 point), and Latinos (+1 point). The national exit poll suggests that there were more youth in 2016 who supported a third-party candidate, did not vote for a presidential candidate, or specifically chose not to answer this poll question. White youth have been markedly less likely than youth of color to support Democratic candidates. This year, 43% of young Whites voted for Clinton, while Black youth supported her by almost double that margin (83%). However, it's worth noting that young African Americans were notably less likely to support Clinton in 2016 (83%) than Obama in 2012 (91%).

Twenty-eight states had exit polls during the 2016 general election-primarily the most populous and most competitive states. Two of those states didn't report presidential vote choice by age. Among the remaining 26 states, Trump won young voters in four states (Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, and Utah) and two saw a tie in youth support between the candidates (Indiana and Iowa), while . The youth support margins varied state-by-state, sometimes wildly. In South Carolina the exit poll estimates that youth support for Trump was 43% and 42% for Clinton; in Kentucky, Trump garnered 59% of youth votes while Clinton received 34%. Secretary Clinton won young voters in the other 20 states, and in ten of them by over 20 points.

Youth Affect Presidential Competitiveness in Key States

Our analysis of margin of victory in relation to estimated youth turnout and choice revealed that young voters played an important role in keeping some key races very close. If it were not for young voters' support for Hillary Clinton, electoral college votes in Michigan, New Hampshire, and Nevada would have gone more decisively to Donald Trump. Michigan and New Hampshire are currently too close to call in part because of the edge that young voters gave Clinton in those states.

In Nevada, Hillary Clinton won by an estimated 26,000 votes. Youth decisively favored Clinton in Nevada (52% to 35%), and this resulted in a net gain of 35,000 votes for Clinton. If young people had voted in equal number for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Clinton's victory would have been by an even narrower margin of less than 10,000 votes.

In Michigan, which has not been called yet, young voters' decisive support has played a major role in keeping the race close. Currently, Donald Trump is leading Hillary Clinton by about 12,000 votes, but youth favored Hillary Clinton by over 232,000 votes (57% to 34%). If young voters' support for her was even slightly less decisive, Donald Trump would have won the state handily.

In New Hampshire, where the vote is also too close to call with just about 1,400 votes separating Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, young voters also gave the Democratic candidate a boost. Youth gave Clinton a net of 12,000 by favoring her 49% to 41%, and if young people had chosen instead to split their votes equally between Trump and Clinton, she would currently be behind by almost 5,000 votes. In New Hampshire, young voters were the only group that gave a significant edge to Clinton.

"In 2016, young voters were a substantial voting bloc and they influenced the outcome, although a majority of them ended up on the losing side of the presidential race," said CIRCLE director Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg. "Young voters supported Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates more than any other age group did. However, they are a heterogeneous generation, and their choices differed greatly depending on their own race, their state, and other factors."

"Turnout" is the percentage of age-eligible citizens who voted, and we define "youth voter turnout" in this instance is the percentage of eligible 18 to 29-year-olds who voted. CIRCLE's preliminary turnout estimate uses data from the National Exit Polls conducted by Edison/Mitofsky, the number of ballots cast in the United States (aggregated from data provided by local election officials), and current Census data on the number of young citizens in the United States.

As of this writing (noon on November 9, 2016), an estimated 23.7 million young voters participated in the 2016 presidential election, which is 50% of citizens aged 18-29 in the United States. We estimate that 13 million youth voted for Secretary Clinton and almost 9 million youth voted for Donald Trump. An additional 2 million young people either voted for third-party candidates or chose not to vote for any of the Presidential candidates on the ballot.

CIRCLE estimates youth voting after elections based on several variables, including the total number of ballots counted and the exit polls. These variables are subject to change in the hours and days after an election. In several states, less than 95% of precincts have reported their votes. Also, in some past years, the National Exit Polls (NEP) conducted by Edison Research have adjusted their statistics in the first few days after an election.

While we produced a preliminary national turnout estimate of 50% based on best-available data, it is vital to note that there can be dramatic differences in youth voter turnout by state.

By another measure of youth participation, the proportion of all votes cast by young people, in most of the 28 states where exit polls were conducted youth made up an equal or larger share of the electorate than senior citizens: higher in 14 states, and tied in three.
Note: No national official count of voters by age is immediately available after an election. Therefore, any statistic on youth voter turnout is an estimate based on survey data. Like any survey, the National Exit Poll uses methods that may introduce sampling bias. In past years, our estimates of youth turnout from the National Exit Poll (shown above) have produced a trend that very closely tracks the turnout trend in the Census Current Population Survey (CPS), which is the other major source for estimating youth turnout once it is released in the Spring. These estimates diverged slightly in 2012, although both showed a decrease. A third source of youth voting data is national voter files, which are based on aggregated state files available in the new year. Estimates based on this source tend to be underestimates, since not all states keep comprehensive age data. A lack of reliable data for years before 2012 also means that national trends are not currently available.

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CIRCLE " An Estimated 24 Million Young People Voted in 2016 Election

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The he preeminent youth research organization at Tufts University-this morning released an analysis of 2016 exit poll data in historical context. As in the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) -t poll that we conducted before the election, we continue to see big differences among young people depending on their race and ethnicity.

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