OUR VIEW:
Young people cannot expect political leaders to cater to their needs if they won’t vote and let leaders know what they believe in.
If the tens of millions of dollars spent on disparaging ads this summer weren’t enough to put this year’s election between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in full swing, Romney’s announcement of his vice presidential candidate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, certainly did. Many have simply been waiting to see how the tickets stack up against each other, and the speeches and rhetoric are angrier and more pointed than ever.
But Romney’s VP pick is a reminder it’s time for students to start paying attention to the election. Ninety million Americans eligible to vote likely won’t, according to a USA TODAY article published yesterday.
Additionally, a July Gallup poll showed that only 58 percent of voters aged 18 to 29 said they would definitely vote in this year’s election – down 20 percent from their answer to the same question exactly four years ago. The 2008 election saw the highest turnout among young voters since 1992, when then-46-year-old Bill Clinton won the presidency. Likewise, last presidential election’s high turnout has been attributed to the presence of then-47-year-old Obama on the ballot. In the upcoming election, there’s no reason the numbers should be going down – Obama is running again, and Ryan is the first Generation X-er to appear on a major party ticket. With the potential for candidates from both parties to relate to the younger demographic, students should be just as engaged in the outcome of this November’s election.
What goes on in Washington may seem far removed from the life of a college student; the futures of Social Security and Medicare aren’t what most of us are currently concerned about. But students sometimes have the most at stake.
Earlier this year, legislators nearly couldn’t agree on how to prevent student loan interest rates from doubling, which would have meant an additional $1,000 in repayments, on average. Congress only passed the bill hours before its deadline after weeks of what seemed like impassable gridlock – a recurring theme of this congressional session.
In a recent USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll, 59 percent of eligible voters who said they were unlikely to cast a ballot in November said they don’t pay attention to politics because “it’s a bunch of empty promises,” and 41 percent said they wouldn’t be worried about not voting because they don’t think their vote makes a difference.
Students, however, literally can’t afford to buy into this mindset. We often complain lawmakers don’t care about us or aren’t listening to our needs. But if we can’t take a few minutes to register and show up to the polls, then we really can’t complain.
School starts in less than two weeks, so any students who haven’t registered to vote should do so now, before the craze of classes and social lives kick in. Aside from the numerous opportunities on the campus, there’s a new online voter registration system. It’s easier than ever to register to vote in this state – just do so by the Oct. 16 deadline.
Americans showed immense pride during this year’s Olympics when rooting for U.S. athletes and boasting when the country won the gold medal and overall medal counts. Politics, especially the kind we’re left with today, usually don’t ignite that sort of passion, but citizens – students included – should take the same sort of pride in the fact they can elect the country’s leader. After all, millions of people around the world rose up, fought and sacrificed thousands of lives in the Arab Spring for that right.
It’s understandable that students are, frankly, bored, uninterested or even frustrated by what’s going on in the presidential campaign. There’s been a lot of rhetoric and a lot of attacks on both ends. While it may sound cliche, every vote does matter, especially when the man who has control of the White House in January – along with the next Congress – holds students’ college futures in his hands.
