Young Voter Turnout Essay
Increasing young voter turnout is becoming a predominant challenge during election season, with many young people deciding to stay home on election day. A huge percent of young people do not feel the need to turn out for these important elections, leaving their candidates floundering for support, resulting in an issue. The United States of America is a democracy, and the young voters are a large part of our population. Without their input, The United States will not be a fairly represented nation. Bringing up the point, why is America’s Youth not participating in this basic act of Civic Engagement. The first complication with young voters, is that they turn out to elections at lower rates. Reasons given for young voter’s lack of participation
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Many students have to file for absentee ballots because they have registered to vote at home, and cannot make it home on election day. Absentee ballots can be troublesome, because there are deadlines to apply for the ballot that are different than the typical election dates. Plus, in many states your ballot needs to be notarized by a professional, which takes added time. Along with buying stamps and mailing the absentee ballot out, the process takes ten times as long as simply voting at your designated polling place on election day (Eisner, 2004). Increasing youth voting can be done by figuring out the correct number of young people that are actually voting, strengthening political ties, and by making voting more accessible to everyone. When the problem of the decrease in youth voting is defined, it will be easier to find the solution. Determining who is voting each election day, proves a difficult task because the Federal Election Commission does not have a way of knowing voter’s ages as they cast their ballot (Levine and Lopez, 2002). This is because voters are not required to state their age when they vote, and so all of the information is based upon surveys taken after the fact (Eisner, 2004). By adding people’s ages to the ballot, we can accurately determine how severe the problem
Many students have to file for absentee ballots because they have registered to vote at home, and cannot make it home on election day. Absentee ballots can be troublesome, because there are deadlines to apply for the ballot that are different than the typical election dates. Plus, in many states your ballot needs to be notarized by a professional, which takes added time. Along with buying stamps and mailing the absentee ballot out, the process takes ten times as long as simply voting at your designated polling place on election day (Eisner, 2004). Increasing youth voting can be done by figuring out the correct number of young people that are actually voting, strengthening political ties, and by making voting more accessible to everyone. When the problem of the decrease in youth voting is defined, it will be easier to find the solution. Determining who is voting each election day, proves a difficult task because the Federal Election Commission does not have a way of knowing voter’s ages as they cast their ballot (Levine and Lopez, 2002). This is because voters are not required to state their age when they vote, and so all of the information is based upon surveys taken after the fact (Eisner, 2004). By adding people’s ages to the ballot, we can accurately determine how severe the problem