Vote or be screwed
There are a lot of really bad reasons not to vote. Many of them apply to me. For example, I have already voted absentee in the state of Maryland, all of whose electoral votes will undoubtedly go to Kerry. In practical terms, my vote will have zero impact on who wins. Zip. Nada. Bupkis. I could just as well have made a paper airplane, written “John Kerry” on it and thrown it into the sky, hoping that Jehovah, Allah and Jesus would get together and make Florida go Democratic.
I don’t even like any of the candidates all that much. Neither Kerry nor Bush has great policy ideas, and, individually, both are hopelessly mediocre. I’m not terribly fond of the current administration, but dislike of one candidate doesn’t seem to be a great reason to vote for another. Plus, I’ve never seen a third party candidate who I didn’t think was completely ridiculous.
Evidently, these reasons (or sheer indifference) are convincing for the majority of us young people. In 2000, only 36.1 percent of citizens aged 18 to 24 voted, compared with 50.5 percent of those aged 25 to 34, 66.5 percent of those aged 45 to 54 and 72.1 percent of those aged 65 to 74. This voting record has serious consequences: it hurts all young people by cutting them out of the political process.
The truth is, representative democracy is not merely about the people deciding who will rule them. It’s also about politicians trying to get votes. And in society, there are different interest groups using their votes to pressure politicians into doing what they want. Politicians spend their careers figuring out what policies they should enact to get elected and reelected, and that means listening to the interest groups that can deliver them the most votes.
Because older people vote at higher rates and are better organized than the young, politicians tend to pay attention to issues that affect them, at our expense. The AARP provides the elderly with a powerful lobbying group to which politicians listen. That’s why a supposedly conservative Republican Congress and the President had few qualms about passing legislation that pays hundreds of billions of dollars for a Medicare prescription drug benefit. Not wanting to raise taxes, they passed the bill to future generations-that is, us and our children.
Compare that with the current state of Social Security. While everyone laments the fact that Social Security is bound to fail unless more money is set aside or benefits are cut, neither major candidate has a plan to do this. Kerry has been characteristically vague, and Bush’s partial privatization plan will cost $1 trillion while doing little to fix the fundamental problem. Unless we reach a solution soon, part of our paychecks will be sucked into a Social Security system that will go bankrupt long before we retire. Politicians, however, are more interested in meaningless posturing than developing good policy ideas.
In short, young people really get screwed over by the political process. And it’s their fault. If young people voted in greater numbers, politicians would have no choice but to pay attention to them. It doesn’t even matter how they vote; whenever politicians see votes up for grabs, they try to win them.
Of course, it’s important that we research the issues and pick candidates carefully. The way we vote does have an impact, if a miniscule one. But I would rather that young people vote completely irresponsibly and randomly than that they not vote at all. When other young people don’t vote, it lessens my voice as a young person.
So please: vote. If you’re voting by absentee ballot, be sure to send it in first thing this morning. If not, remember to head out to the polls tomorrow-even if that means skipping class and driving ten hours back home. And if you aren’t registered, don’t ask what happened when politicians don’t care about you. Just look in the mirror.
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