in every generation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_vote_in_the_United_States

What kind of nation will it be. If the Republicans prevail, it will be a world with diminished health care and care solely for those with the financial resources to pay for it. Every progressive safety net program will be demolished. The masses without advanced education or inherited wealth will languish in minimal jobs. You only need to have even a basic understanding of history to comprehend what will happen in an explosive situation. It will be like sitting on powder keg only waiting for someone or some unforeseen event to light the fuse.

The present younger generations have grown up in a society enjoying unparalleled wealth. It is a situation stands in stark contrast to those who grew up in the pre-Roosevelt era who worked 12-14 hours, six and even seven days a week for minimal wages. Kids sent off to work at the age of seven, eight and even younger with no hope for an education beyond the bare minimum in the majority of cases. My own family was typical. My father-in-law's education was third grade. Two or my brother-in-laws was eighth grade. My grandfathers on both sides of my family never attended school and were taught to read by their mothers. Home schooling isn't anything new. Women even faired worse.

Today's young people never experienced the situation that people faced during WWII. Virtually ever thing was rationed for the war effort. You were issued ration books for food, clothing, especially shoes and any durable goods, gasoline, and auto replacement parts. The number of toys was minimal with metal toys non-existent. Everyone was expected to plant a Victory Garden and recycle every can that had to be stripped of the label and both lids removed and inserted into the can before it was crushed. My wife and I both look back and say just how fortunate we were. We were both born in middle 30's and saw the explosion of opportunities that came following WWII. Another point is income taxes. The highest rates were in the middle and upper nineties making today's rates for the wealthy seem like a pittance in comparison. It appears to me that we are heading for a repeat of the two class society. That could well be the reward of the youth's apathy.

Baby Boomers are dying off. It is up to them to determine what kind of world they want to live in. If they think our politics and our "government" are not important, they are in for an extremely rude awakening.

I say this as a young person, it's quite foolish to place any hope in my generation.

kids over fifty years? We gave them a Congress that looks pretty much the same as it did then: old white guys killing EPA, voter's rights, equal rights, celebrates rape by electing a rapist to the SCOTUS.

Then we blame them for electing Trump. We make them skeptics and we lecture them for being skeptical.

the candidate I vote for will also most likely be "minority" American. If I have a choice between two good Democrats and one of them looks like me - old, white, male - I'm voting for the other choice.

I helped get us here. By not critically looking at some of those I voted for, by not agitating often or enough, by not working in a campaign since the seventies, by cynically not voting in 2000, by buying into some of the antigovernment BS Reagan started that wasn't so much a criticism of government function as it was an attempt to suppress voter turnout because low turnout elections are beneficial to Republicans.

We.

Not those of us who do.

I always voted when I was in college. In fact, I often worked.at the polls. My friends and I took the attitude that people who didn't vote couldn't complain.

and pack heat.

We have to take this election and prepare for the inevitable RW reaction.

No, my friends and I did not do that.

who registered for the first time and voted for cheetolini. And there were tons of them.

that earlier in the week. All I could think about is how I started voting at 18 back in the 70’s. What is wrong with these students. I still think many people (of all ages) don’t think their vote matters. I also wonder what kind of restrictions there are for students who are not permanent residents of the state where they attend college. That could be one reason they don’t vote.

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/college-game-plan/voting-hurdles-often-keep-college-students-away-ballot-box-n637046


Aug 25 2016, 8:08 am ET
Voting Hurdles Often Keep College Students Away From the Ballot Box

by Elizabeth Campbell, News21

Editor's Note: This report is part of a project on voting rights in America produced by the Carnegie-Knight News21 program.

TEMPE, Ariz. — Students at Rollins College in Florida are designing custom “I voted” stickers for absentee voters. Across the country, the University of Southern California has partnered with county officials to host voter registration events with prizes, games and free food. And at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the student government plans campuswide voter registration drives as well.

Across the country, groups and organizations promoting civic engagement among college students have spent hundreds — if not thousands — of hours trying to galvanize this large, yet often elusive group of potential voters.

The Campus Vote Project, one of the most prominent college voter outreach groups, has launched an initiative to establish “voter-friendly” campuses. So far, more than 90 institutions, including Rollins College, have agreed to commit to things such as hosting voter registration drives, inviting candidates to speak or offering rides to the polls to increase voter education, registration and mobilization.

Click here for the complete project "Voting Wars - Rights | Power | Privilege."

Why go to the trouble of recruiting college voters? College students have the potential to influence elections. There were 17.3 million undergraduate students enrolled in degree-granting postsecondary institutions in 2014, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Experts predict that population will increase to 19.8 million by 2025.

Yet millennials have the lowest turnout rates of all the generations. Because the majority of college students are under age 25, they make up a significant part of that age group.
"“There's a whole group of states that are trying to make it harder and harder every year to get to the ballots.”"

Experts have speculated on a number of reasons why college students don’t vote: They don’t feel connected to the community, don’t like the candidates or don’t know enough about the issues.

But for many, this isn’t because of voter apathy, but rather the hassle involved with registering to vote and casting their ballot while in college. They face hurdles including proof of residency, absentee ballot use and voter identification. These issues tend to disproportionately affect college students because so many students travel out of state for college.


<snip>



Waller County here in Texas has ignored Federal law to keep students from Prairieview A&M, a historically black majority College from voting. He just ignores the Feds and is doing it again right now for the Nov 6 election.


Prairie View Students March to Restore Voting Rights February 25, 2008
Posted by twilightandreason in African American Professors, African American Students, Black Colleges, Black Students, Primary Elections, race, racism, Student Voters, Waller County.
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https://twilightandreason.wordpress.com/category/waller-county/

Down in Waller County, Texas it’s started to look an awful lot like the bad old days of poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and literacy tests. Back in the bad old days, the white folks could brag that “their Blacks” knew their place, and that place did not include the voting booth.

At a time when unprecedented young people are flocking to the polls to cast their vote for two candidates whose very presence as Democratic front runners encourages us toward “the audacity of hope” in a new future, Waller County voting officials have chosen not to support students involvement in the political process, but — instead — to audaciously and shamelessly resurrect a racist politics of disenfrancishement that should have been buried along with blackface minstrelsy and Jim Crow.

In my blog post of January 7, 2008, I wrote of the current backlash against the growing participation of student voters in the the various state primaries. My roster of these efforts includes proposed legislation from the GOP side of the aisle and derisive comments about college voters form select and high profile Democrat. Now I must add to that list the more hands-on approach of Waller County’s voting officials, whose inexplicable decision to “cut early-voting sites from a half dozen throughout the county to one in Hempstead,” about 7 milse from the historically Black Prairie View A&M University, home to approximately 3000 registered voters (source: The Houston Chronicle), has prompted a surge of student activism.

On Tuesday, February 21, more than 2000 Prairie View students (according to police estimates) and their supports held a 7 mile march to the polls in order to protest the lack of a polling place on the 7000-student campus. Just last week the U.S. Department of Justice intervened and Waller county added three temporary polling places for early voting.

Students protested the absence of an early voting location on or near the campus, a problem which — strictly speaking — was not immediately solved by the county’s promise to add additional temporary polling sites. The Texas presidential primary is on March 4, but the county’s temporary pollings sites only opened on February 22, three days after on-site early voting had already begun throughout the state. Tuesday’s march coincided with the opening of poll sites for early voting across Texas.

<snip>

https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Arrest-throws-Waller-County-voter-registration-13297719.php

State standards in 47 states are framed as civics OR social studies, which often translates to teaching just history courses. The course still exists, along with government courses, but only 17 states actually have civics in their state curriculum frameworks. As a result, many young people are not schooled in the importance of the vote—and the role they play by voting or choosing not to vote.

Remember the Citizenship category on report cards? I do.

is enormously important. But what they listened to their parents saying as children is also tremendously formative, and for a very long time parents have been soaking up anti-government propaganda and false equalizations between Democrats and the corrupt, wealth-serving Republican Party.

Most of today's young people have no idea what the Democratic Party stands for or would accomplish in office because most of what they hear is hostile lies and they can't recognize truth when they hear it. Much less believe in it.

And Republicans and, we now know, Russia are working hard to keep it that way. Those on the left who are less easily demoralized and dispirited they try to divert to cheer and vote for spoiler candidates who claim liberal progressive goals but can't deliver.

If you decide to tell some legally adult kids that, though, I'd suggest collaring them one by one, without others around.

I taught college students for most of my career and know full well how they know little about government and politics and the fact that they theoretically have a voice in all this.

I wasn't interested at that age, either. All I saw were old white men, usually bald. That was my image of a holder of political office. Clinton got me interested in politics with his message that government is for all of us and that it can work for us.

I hope that with the election of more women and younger people like Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez, younger people will get more involved.

But yes, I, too, was sick at how little they knew or cared about the political process.

That is something that is totally remedied by political involvement. The reason we have high tuition rates is that the states have pulled back on their support for higher ed. They could be a formidable voting block--but through lack of involvement, they are not because of their lack of involvement.

Not voting? Surrender

to show them what is going on, why voting matters. I have seen 20 somethings pay attention, get interested in voting, all I know are anti tRump but these are "kids" living on their own, trying to make ends meet, know the struggle. I'm thinking those still living at home just don't care because they haven't been exposed to the real world yet.

Yeah - that's a political strategy that works for Republicans.

THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO SAVE YOURSELVES...

The IPCC report, released recently, makes it abundantly clear: inaction = death sentence for billions.
Vote GOP if you want no changes to environmental policy until its too late, start preparing for a life that will be a fraction of what previous generations enjoyed...

Vote Democratic Party if you want even the slightest chance to prevent the worst outcomes, there will STILL be suffering, but it might be contained and even some prevented.

If you need to know "what will they do for me?", the answer is RESPECT THE SCIENCE, PERIOD.

Young people are making a lot of noise this year about important issues but unless they actually turn out and vote in numbers greater than usual for them it is just hot air and politicians will feel free to continue in ignoring them.

It's etched in concrete, and predictable year after year: most young people don't vote.

We always hope that this year will be different. And the numbers do improve somewhat sometimes. But for the most part, young people don't vote. Why? ...Too much hassle? Hung over from the party the night before? Geez, I forgot? I didn't know where to go to vote? I didn't get registered in time? I don't know how to register? I had to work? I slept late, and then it was like, what's the point, man?

Hope springs eternal, though. Maybe this year will be different. I suspect in Florida they'll vote.

convince them to vote.

There's nothing like realizing you have actual skin in the game to motivate people to vote.

...

- Climate Change
- Expensive elongated college terms
- College tuition going more towards facilities and coaching salaries and less towards cheaper college
- Post graduation placement records
- College loan interest rates

I'm thinking those issues would get them to the polls yesterday.

I didn’t turn 18 until I was a freshman in college. They made sure I went to the polls.

Would you let your parents choose your music?

Then don't let them choose your lawmakers.

Why vote when only 55 or 13 votes in your state are the ones who decide everything? If we were to abolish this awful system (and the time for this is long overdue), guaranteed there would be a lot more people caring about their vote.