Tommy Washbush
youth vote in Election 2022
When sizing up election turnout, political operatives often seem resigned to one thing: “Young people don’t vote.”
Every midterm, general and spring election is the same. Campaigns, from the most progressive to the most conservative, engage in a hierarchical ranking of their key voters, and young people are rarely placed at the top. It’s assumed the older, and in many cases, the whiter, voter is the more reliable candidate to cast a ballot on Election Day. Much to the detriment of our democracy, the youth vote is rarely prioritized.
At age 26, I’m a young voter. I understand that people around my age vote less often than our older counterparts. Youth voter participation was, as usual, the lowest of all age groups this past presidential election. In 2020, turnout for those aged 18 to 24 was 15 percent lower than the national average and 25 points lower than Americans aged 65 to 74.
The numbers certainly tell a story, but they do not provide context.
Why aren’t young people voting as much as other age groups? Is it disinterest, disenfranchisement, or both, that keep them from the polls?
Unfortunately, campaigns that weigh the value of a voter based on turnout statistics alone without diving deep into these questions do themselves, and our election processes, a huge disfavor.
The youth voter bloc is not monolithic. Young people have diverse opinions, lived experiences, and vary in their level of civic knowledge and political motivation. More than 8 million people in the United States have turned 18 since 2020; they are now citizens eligible to vote. After the upcoming November election, we might assess their strength as a voting bloc by how many of those eligible cast a ballot.
But eligibility is a tricky thing to gauge. It’s a preliminary step to voting, but it does not account for the barriers that might lead to disengagement. Structural barriers, ranging from the complex rules surrounding registration and voter IDs to the state-by-state ambiguities of absentee voting, all block the pathway to the polls. And where civics education is lacking, which is the situation in many states, including Wisconsin, lower youth participation in our electoral process is almost predestined.
The thing is, we know that young people are politically engaged. They write to their representatives, they protest, they even play an outsized role in shaping social media trends surrounding social justice issues. So if they aren’t voting it’s not because of an inherent apathy; it’s because of the structure of the system they vote in.
A case can be made that when a structural barrier is removed, youth participation in elections goes up. Take our state for example, where youth have an above-average voter registration rate when compared to other states, at 68 percent.
According to Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), a non-partisan, independent research organization focused on youth civic engagement, this trend can be attributed to Wisconsin’s same day and online voter registration processes. Both these policies, they’ve found, can increase electoral participation among youth: in 2020 for example, youth voter registration was 10 points higher in states with online voter registration in place.
That’s significant and begs the question: How much more would youth turnout increase in Wisconsin if we were to remove other barriers to voting like burdensome ID laws, or implement democratic reforms like automatic voter registration?
It is clear that young people hold the power to shift the future of this country at the ballot box. Especially here in Wisconsin.
In 2020, Wisconsin youth preferred President Biden by 23 points in a state that was decided by less than 1 percentage point. And leading up to this November’s midterms, where reestablishing reproductive health rights, combating climate change, and protecting LGBTQ people are top priorities for many Wisconsinites, young voters could be key to a more progressive future.
CIRCLE says the youth vote could be “decisive” in Wisconsin’s midterm races; its Youth Electoral Significance Index, which calculates where young people have an especially high likelihood of influencing election results, ranks the Wisconsin’s governor’s race as #1 in the nation and the U.S. Senate race as #5. The rankings are based on data on youth population, past voter history, projected electoral competitiveness, and other relevant factors.
That is good news. But the impact researchers predict can only happen if campaigns, political parties, and organizations stop devaluing young voters. The #youthvote’s impact depends on the work we do to reduce and eliminate structural barriers for young people now.
We must look past turnout statistics and take a more holistic approach to the youth vote. Young people don’t need to be convinced to care about the world around them; they just need help getting to the polls.
Nada Elmikashfi is chief of staff to state Rep. Francesca Hong and a former candidate for state Senate. She has endorsed Mandela Barnes for Senate; Brad Pfaff for Congress and Tony Evers for governor.
