The Silent Generation: Finding its Voice

It is finally time to examine options for how to solve the lack of university student voting participation across the nation, focusing specifically on the students at the University of Michigan. In my previous blog post, I formulated that the two main causes of poor voting participation revolve around the process of registering to vote, and the fact that students are becoming apathetic to politics overall. Finding ways to counteract these barriers will lead to more effective participation among all students at the university level.

I met with Joris von Moltke, an active member in Voice Your Vote (VYV)– an organization within the executive branch of the Central Student Government focused on registering students to vote and educating students on the political issues to gain greater appreciation for voting– in order to get a better feel for what the university is doing to inspire students to vote. He believes that “the University of Michigan is not doing enough to get people excited to vote… and that a proactive system should be put in place by the university to get people to go out and vote.” To contend with this, VYV is acting to fill the gap left by the university.

Currently, the organization is in talks with city councilman Zach Ackerman about a possible creation of a city ordinance requiring all landlords within Ann Arbor to provide tenants with voter registration forms. This would directly impact students living off campus, who may deem it too difficult to go out and register on their own time by presenting them with new ways to start the registration process without leaving their homes. Also, for those who may not know to where registration forms need be delivered, VYV has installed drop boxes around campus in most major dorms where students can deposit their completed forms in order to have them be turned in to the city clerk by a VYV representative.

Turning to the problem of apathy, Joris claims that it is in relation to misinformation in the general public. Adam Pzreworski argues that as politics becomes more polarized, people lose interest because they no longer identify with the views of the prevailing candidates, but this is missing the point of apathy on the campus level. Joris says, “It’s not necessarily about choosing the candidate… we are in a system that is based on voicing your own opinion. You are acting irrational when you do not vote because you are basically saying that it is alright that you do not have a say, and that is counterproductive for democracy. You should want to have a say, and there is no easier way to express that than with voting.” We should look at voting as an opportunity to voice our own opinions instead of endorsing candidates with whom our opinions may not coincide, but students are too uninformed about the issues for this to occur.

The norm for students in the current age is that 'my vote does not matter.' In order to raise participation among college students, this needs to change; we need to invoke a sense of normality into active participation and voting. Hanna Pitkin offers a possible solution to this that could be used to inspire a greater aspect of participation. She proposes the creation of a system of face-to-face, local, direct democracy in communities, which can be carried over to attempt to counteract voter apathy by getting more people involved in politics on campus. This is done on a small scale at the University of Michigan through the democratic and republican student organizations, but I believe it can be expanded to include more students, creating a larger impact on voting. Creating open forums and debates focusing on pertinent issues of the day will allow for students to voice their opinions and be swayed by those of others. By starting with small, localized groups we will be able to expand to cover a wide array of interests that may be lost in national politics, inciting the participation of those whose opinions often get overshadowed. Helping people see that they can change small things that do affect them daily can lead to a sense of importance and value in one’s opinion, and this can be used to counteract apathy.

By reducing apathy while also providing students with more opportunities to register to vote, we could possibly see an increase in voter participation among the college-aged electorate. Making sure everyone has the ability to register to vote by making it known how easy the process is, and then creating more options and discussion around campus for students to learn about why they truly should be voting will lead to greater participation in the long run. Coming together to understand that our voice and our opinions matter is key to make sure the student generation of voters no longer remains silent.

  

Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. Representation and Democracy: Uneasy Alliance. Nordic Political Science Association. 2004.

Pzreworski, Adam. Self-Government in our Times. Annual Reviews. 2009.

Voice Your Vote. csg.umich.edu. UM Central Student Government. 2014. web.

https://csg.umich.edu/executive-branch/commissions/voice-your-vote