Edited 04/01/2016 for clarity and modify media
Last week, the state of Michigan held its 2016 Presidential Primary. Thousands of students from the University of Michigan took an hour out of their usual Tuesday schedule in order to do their duty as citizens, casting their ballot for many important issues including whomever they want to be running the country as president for the next four to eight years. I was not one of them. This is a fact that I am ashamed to admit, for if I, a student studying political science at the University of Michigan, cannot motivate myself to vote in one of the most contested primary elections in the history of our country, how can we expect better from the run-of-the-mill, knows nothing about politics student who may want to vote but does not know how or from those who truly do not care enough to proceed with their expected duty?
Last week, the state of Michigan held its 2016 Presidential Primary. Thousands of students from the University of Michigan took an hour out of their usual Tuesday schedule in order to do their duty as citizens, casting their ballot for many important issues including whomever they want to be running the country as president for the next four to eight years. I was not one of them. This is a fact that I am ashamed to admit, for if I, a student studying political science at the University of Michigan, cannot motivate myself to vote in one of the most contested primary elections in the history of our country, how can we expect better from the run-of-the-mill, knows nothing about politics student who may want to vote but does not know how or from those who truly do not care enough to proceed with their expected duty?
The
promise of democracy is that every person gets an opportunity to make his or
her voice heard in the larger spectrum, "the people is free, subject only to those laws it chose, when the people governs itself" (Przeworski). This is projected in a representative democracy by way
of citizens voting on large issues of the day and for whomever they want to be
representing them where the decisions are being made, yet this process is
undercut when people decide not to participate in the political sphere. In Self-Government in Our Times, Adam
Przeworski argues that one of the main challenges facing democracy is that
there is an “incapacity to make people feel that their participation is
effective.” People who do not vote, cannot possibly expect to be fairly
represented in a democracy, as their opinions are never heard and cannot be considered. This comes
across very clearly when looking at college campuses around the country.
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| Young-Adult Voting: An Analysis of Presidential Elections, 1964-2012 |
Students nationwide are deciding not to vote anymore. The U.S. Census Bureau states that in 2012, a Presidential election year, only 38 percent of
eligible voters aged 18 to 24 turned out to vote in November. The next lowest
percentage voter turnout was from eligible voters aged 25 to 44 years, which was
a whole 10 percent higher, sitting at 49.5 percent. Voter turnout from those aged 18 to 24 was
doubled by those who were 65 years and older. The fact that college age
students yield the lowest turnout in voters deeply confounds me. All of us will
be entering the job market in the coming years and will be directly affected by
the direction of our government in the near future. By not voting, students are
not voicing their own opinions to representatives, and thus, these opinions are
being largely left out of national politics. We continually seem to be under
the impression that our participation politically is unnecessary and, above
all, unrelated to where we want to be in our future lives. College students have become the silent generation of the American electorate.
To make matters ever more grim, the percentage
of 18 to 24 year old voter turnout dropped to 23.1% in 2014. While elections in
that year were only congressional, it still pales in comparison to other age
groups of voters. Finally, also taken from the U.S. Census Bureau, data shows strong
decreasing percentages in voting among 18 to 24 year olds since both the 1976 presidential election and the 1978 congressional election. College students voting less and less, and this is a continuously decreasing trend in the long-run.
I have decided to tackle the issues
involving college student voting participation at the University of Michigan in
a three part blog posted over the next three weeks. This vast democratic shortcoming,
leading to a severe underrepresentation of the upcoming electorate, stems from
two main foundations: the voter
registration process among college campuses is flawed with no attempts at creating a fix, and many students
experience apathy when looking at politics as parties continue to polarize, causing people to identify with the views of candidates less and less.
Next week, we will begin to dig into why college students are not voting, including an interview with Ian Hecker from Action for America, followed by the final post about what we
as a university can do to combat poor political participation on campus, set to
come out April 12th.
File, Thom. Who
Votes? Congressional Elections and the American Electorate: 1978-2014. U.S.
Census Bureau 2015.
File, Thom. Young-Adult
Voting: An Analysis of Presidential Elections, 1964-2012. U.S. Census
Bureau. 2014.
Pzreworski, Adam. Self-Government
in our Times. Annual Reviews. 2009.
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