Sept. 28 was National Voter Registration Day, and while there are no “big” elections coming up this year, it is still important to ensure that you have the ability to enact your voice in politics, local and national.
In the latest presidential election, 41% of the 18-24 age group was not registered to vote, yet registering is not difficult. You can register at the DMV, or even by using your prospective state’s government website.
Based on what I have heard, people in this age group either don’t think their vote is worth all the trouble, or don’t care about how our country is ran. When looking at the age demographics of people who are eligible to hold office, it is obvious that our generation does not have much influence up in Washington. However, we might be able to change that.
If our generation has a higher registration/voter turnout rate, we can influence elections. The reason politicians don’t really lobby after our age group is because we have never had a great influence on the outcome of elections. That is why older generations are so influential. Boomers seem to have freer time to be politically active, and so they get what they want much more often than us.
Cheaper college, universal healthcare and a higher minimum wage are all things that our generation seems to be interested in enacting, but we haven’t had the influence to do so. The population of the more aged has accrued a significant portion of wealth in our country, and they intend to hold on to it. Helping out our generation would hurt their pockets, so they don’t use their influence to enact these desires.
This is not a call for a revolution against the Boomers. They’ll be unimportant soon enough, hopefully. What I am trying to say is that our generation could actually better our own futures if we became influential enough to the electorate. Register to vote: it’s free, easy, and if enough of us do and practice that right, we might actually see somebody in office who wasn’t balding during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
If you aren’t registered to vote, I encourage you to visit the Tennessee Online Voter Registration System.
For more information about 2020 election statistics and discrepancies, visit https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/voting-and-registration/p20-585.html
