12 Young People on Why They Probably Won't Vote

[mahatmakanejeeves]

David Fahrenthold Retweeted:

This is a super important and valuable type of reporting, which there isn’t enough of.

Less asking Trump supporters if they still support Trump, more asking non-voters why they didn’t vote.

Link to tweet

2018 MIDTERMS OCT. 30, 2018

12 Young People on Why They Probably Won’t Vote

As told to Rachel Bashein, Zak Cheney-Rice, Amelia Schonbek, and Emma Whitford

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.)

{snip}

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.

{snip}

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 There’s a small, outdated website where you can enter your information and check.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.

{snip}

*A version of this article appears in the October 29, 2018, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!

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Disaffected Young Americans: You Have Everything to Lose If You Don’t Vote

I'm wondering if it's not too early in the day for me to start drinking.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Most of the reasons seem to boil down to that they think it's too much of a hassle

to learn something about the issues or the candidates, or even get off their dead asses long enough to fill out a form or mail an envelope or show up at a polling place.

[KCDebbie]

2. The basics of chess should be a required class in

In public school education.

Young people need to be able to visualize how their actions or lack of actions affect their futures and chess (or ANY game that requires strategy) will enable these young people to understand cause and effect, even if the effects are 40 years into the future...

[beachbum bob]

3. Fuel by lazy and fed by apathy. These people have the most at risk,

and if they don't care, we'll, no whining about outcomes

[zipplewrath]

6. I'm a bit more generous

They remind me of the reverse of older people who end up resisting technology because it is confusing to them. The millennials have spent their lives in a very interactive world that they understand. Extracting them into a world of snail mail with post marks and stamps, not to mention having to have calendars that they have to actually fill in critical dates and check on them by looking them up just overwhelms them.

I often spend time with the new employees explaining how we "used to do it". Trig tables, log tables, slide rulers, etc. just blow them away. I actually had to explain that the expression "cut and paste" was coined because to make a report we used to literally "cut" an image out of a document and "paste" it onto the page of a report we were writing, after we had typed it on a page where we left room for it by executing a "carriage return" early across the page. Oh, and it's called a "carriage return" because you were returning the "carriage" that held the paper back to the left side of the page. And that was for formal reports, not less formal ones that we would (gasp) hand write (usually in cursive).

Roll down a window, dial a phone, "drop a dime", 80 character input strings, and more have no real physical meaning to them and when they suddenly engage a process where none of this make any, much less physical, sense to them, they become overwhelmed quite quickly. Anyone who has had to engage the government, especially Social Security or the like, will quickly become familiar. The jargon alone, not to mention the 3 letter alphabet agencies that abound just lead to an environment where someone is spending more time and effort just trying to understand what is being said, not understanding what must be done.

[qazplm135]

4. I don't think I want these people to vote

Is that wrong? Lol

[Bfd]

5. Appears Gloria Steinem's 'tongue-in-cheek' remark was more correct than not.

Afterall, she was their age also once. She knows who they are. She also stood to motivate the apathy she witnessed.

[MarvinGardens]

7. Good to know, but

Gag me with a spoon.

[Moostache]

8. I can't answer too early or not for a drink...BUT...

I picked a bad week to stop sniffing glue!

[Rizen]

9. Lol.

[BigmanPigman]

10. The Parkland school teens who led the anti gun marches

March For Our Lives has been doing voter registration campaigns all summer called Vote For Our Lives. They were on MSNBC yesterday and showed how technology is helping younger people to vote. They have special t-shirts that have the bar code thingy that you can scan with your iPhone and it registers you right there and it tells you where you can vote in your area. There is no excuse for not voting. The Generation Z technology is already out there...they just have to stop being apathetic and lazy!

[Dulcinea]

11. My teens wish they could vote.

One will be 17 next week; one will turn 15 on Nov. 19. Their friends who are 18 are enthusiastic about voting. Not all young Americans are lazy & disaffected.

[Blue_Tires]

12. Agitprop bullshit

I've been seeing variations of the same "Young people too cool/bored/disaffected to vote this year" every election cycle for 20 years...