Minors Fight For the Right to Vote
No matter who wins in November, the 2008 election has already made history.
The campaigns have been the most expensive ever, with candidates collectively raising more than $1 billion for the first time. And of course, the country will have either a black president or a female vice president, both firsts.
Another first this election season may be a record high turnout among voters 18 to 24. But some young people won’t be going to the polls this fall, despite being extremely politically engaged. They can’t – they’re not 18 yet.
For politically active teens, sitting on the sidelines of this historic election is frustrating. They think they deserve the right to vote, and they’re fighting for it.
LISTEN: Students tell American Observer's Lori Grisham why they care about this election.
“I think that just being of the age of maturity does not necessarily make you mature,” said Alex Koroknay-Palicz, executive director of the National Youth Rights Association, an organization that advocates for a range of youth rights, including the right to vote.
“There are so many people out there – adults – who don’t understand basic concepts of our democracy,” he said. “And they should be allowed to vote, but it is very hypocritical for them to have the right to vote when informed young people don’t have that right.”
While the National Youth Rights Association does not specify at what age voting rights should be conferred, Koroknay-Palicz said most efforts have sought to lower the age to 16. Brazil, Austria, Cuba and Nicaragua allow 16-year-olds to vote, he said.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in the United States have made several recent efforts to lower the voting age.
Cambridge, Mass., passed an ordinance in 2002 allowing 17-year-olds to vote in local elections, but the law stalled in the state legislature. A bill was introduced into the California Senate in 2004 to lower the voting age to 16, but it never came to a vote.
Koroknay-Palicz said his group has worked on campaigns all over the country, including in Washington, Maryland, Maine, Texas, and Alaska. As with the movement for women’s suffrage, he said, young people will first make inroads at the local level and then will push to lower the voting age nationwide.
“There seem to be more campaigns - and more and more serious campaigns - every year,” he said. “We haven’t done it yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”
That time may be soon.
New York City looks poised to give limited voting rights to young people through a campaign backed by the Future Voters of America, a youth group based in the city.
If successful, the campaign would allow youth 16 and older to serve as full voting members of New York City’s 59 community boards, the most local level of city government.
To allow youth to hold the seats, the state’s public officers law must be changed. Francine Baras, executive director of Future Voters of America, said a bill doing just that has already passed the state Senate and has been introduced in the House. The city council must also vote on the measure.
Baras said she is optimistic that the bill will pass the council this year. Members of Future Voters of America are engaged in a massive postcard drive, she said, letting council members and community board members know young people want this bill to pass.
“Barack Obama’s campaign has allowed politicians to think about this demographic in a more serious way,” Baras said. “Kids who are 16 are going to be 18 before we all know it. They are getting involved, and they are also raising money.”
Baras said the next step for Future Voters of America is securing voting rights for 16-year-olds in local elections for mayor and city government.
But until such efforts are successful, young people under 18 can participate in just one kind of election – a mock one.
The National Student/Parent Mock Election began in 1980, and now works with schools and students in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and American schools around the world, said Gloria Kirshner, the group's president and co-founder. In the last presidential election year, more than 4 million students participated in the mock election, she said.
The goal of the National Student/Parent Mock Election is to “turn the sense of powerlessness that young people and their parents feel going to the polls into a sense of the power of participation," Kirshner said.
But not all people are as motivated as the youth. Kirshner said for many people, including adults, voting feels more like a chore than a chance to participate in a grand experiment of democracy.
“What they don’t realize often is that each generation must create a democracy anew," she said. "It’s not something you can feel is engraved in stone, it’s a living, breathing experiment that’s been going on here for all these centuries, and the experiment continues right this minute."
Leo Shapiro, a sociologist who conducts research for the organization on a volunteer basis, said early involvement in the electoral process is essential.
Shapiro said his research has found that "unless a child becomes interested in politics by the age of eight, they are unlikely to become informed or dedicated voters."
Shapiro said children typically become engaged in politics because their parents talk about issues at home or bring children to the polling booth.
But “family structures are beginning to break down, and you don't get the tradition of voting - or even driving - passed along from parents to children," Shapiro added.
The mock elections help build the habit of voting, he said.
Both Kirshner and Shapiro said they are heartened by statistics showing increasing youth participation in actual elections.
According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, youth voting surged 11 percent in the 2004 presidential election after declining 16 points since 1972, the first presidential election in which 18-year-olds could vote. Youth participation in the 2008 presidential primaries was also higher than in previous years, according to the center.
This year’s National Student/Parent Mock Election will be held nationwide on Oct. 30, and the outcome will be announced the same day. Asked whether past mock elections have matched the general election results, Kirshner gently chastised this reporter for missing the point.
“We are not pollsters, we are educators,” she said. “What we're trying to do is protect the future of our democracy.”
