Everyone has those couple of friends that are constantly complaining about politics, the government, and taxes. They hate Obama, and claim Obamacare is unconstitutional because "he is a Muslim" and "was born in Africa." They whine about Dannel Malloy and all the awful things he has done to Connecticut.
But when you ask them if they voted, they quickly backpedal. “Oh, nah man, who has time for that? It doesn’t even matter, the government doesn’t care about you.” This has become a huge problem.
We are in one of the strangest times in political history. Every week, huge decisions are being made. Health insurance has been given to hundreds of thousands of people under the Affordable Care Act. The middle class is disappearing. College tuition for in-state students has gone up 110 percent since 1994. In addition, who has any idea what is going on with climate change but that it should be talked about more? All of these issues are affecting, and will always affect, students our age, but this is also the same age group that's voting the least.
Voter turnout for young adults ages 18 to 24 has dropped from 50.9 percent in 1964 to just 38 percent in 2012. Young voters have a consistently lower rate than any other age group since 1962. One of the reasons Obama was able to win the election in swing states like Florida, Virginia, and Ohio was due to the young adult votes. If Romney had been able to at least split that vote, he could have picked up wins in any of those states.
This, of course, has ramifications. Everyone loves to complain about the awful job Congress is doing, but in the last midterm elections, only 12 percent of voters under the age of 30 came out to vote. This resulted in more and more Republican Senate, House members, and governors, giving Republicans control of the Senate.
In turn, this can be used to block whoever President Obama nominates for Supreme Court Justice. When voting turnout is low, Republicans tend to win more elections. The mess that the Senate and Congress has been in for the last couple of years was brought on by a lack of young voters.
Unless you have been living under a rock, you should know that this year is an election year. Specifically, this one is turning out to be a weird election that seems like an awful '80s movie that no one ever wants to watch.
On one, Republican hand, you have a reality TV star and Twitter troll, the Zodiac Killer, and the nice governor of Ohio being the sober one, yet still trying to control their friends at the bar.
On the Democratic hand, you have former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who has been the party's decision for nominee since 2008, and the working class hero, fighter of the middle class who has been making a surge in the polls, Bernie Sanders (I have obviously picked my candidate).
This vote will come down to the vote of the youth, as unreliable as it might be. Both Trump and Sanders lead polls with first-time voters. Sanders has a 78 percent lead in youth voters over Hillary. For only the second time in the Iowa caucus, more than 4 percent of the youth vote came out, leading to a much closer race than anyone would anticipated this summer.
The Massachusetts election came down to Clinton with 50 percent and Sanders with 48 percent, coming down to a difference of 17,068 votes. This just proves that this will be a close election, and your vote will count.
This year's election will be a long, strange, and bitter one. Every last vote is going to count and be the deciding factor among a President Trump, a second President Clinton, or a President Sanders.
