My own idea; People from age 50 and up vote. Those under 50

[CK_John]

make a lot of activity and noise but fail to complete the process to actually end up voting.

Just my idea of the way it works..

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. "Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X outvoted older generations in 2018 midterms"

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/29/gen-z-millennials-and-gen-x-outvoted-older-generations-in-2018-midterms/

Midterm voter turnout reached a modern high in 2018, and Generation Z, Millennials and Generation X accounted for a narrow majority of those voters, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly available Census Bureau data.

Together, Gen Z and Millennials reported casting 30.6 million votes, a quarter of the total. Gen Z was responsible for 4.5 million, or 4%, of all votes. This post-Millennial generation is just starting to reach voting age, and their impact will likely be felt more in the 2020 presidential election, when they are projected to be 10% of eligible voters.

Millennials, ages 22 to 37 in 2018, cast 26.1 million votes, far higher than the number of votes they cast in 2014 (13.7 million).

Generation X, those ages 38 to 53 in 2018, cast 31.6 million votes – the first time they had more than 30 million votes in a midterm election. Their turnout rate also increased, from 39% in 2014 to 55% four years later.

Baby Boomers, those ages 54 to 72 in 2018, had their highest-ever midterm election turnout (64%, the same rate as the Silent Generation) and cast more votes than they ever have in a midterm (44.1 million). Still, they had a relatively smaller turnout increase than the younger generations (53% of Boomers turned out in 2014). Overall, Boomers cast 36% of ballots in last year’s election – their lowest share of midterm voters since 1986 – because of mortality, while the younger generations are still growing due to naturalizations and adults turning 18.

[YOHABLO]

2. I've always voted ever since I was eligible at 18. They have no excuse.

[jberryhill]

4. Did you go away to college in a place that recognized college students as residents?

Just out of curiosity on how you translate your personal experience to everyone else...

If you went to college, then did you (a) change your residence to the place where you went to college, or (b) go to college in the same area or state where you lived when you turned 18, or (c) move away to college, but kept your ID and residence back home and either voted absentee or went home to vote?

Because, unlike the magical way you dealt with that set of problems in the magical jurisdiction where you did it, many places make it extremely difficult for (a) out of state students to claim residence for voting, or (b) students who have moved away to validly vote in the place they moved from. Option (c) is frequently considered fraudulent if you did not live at least 180 days at your previous home, but it's fairly simple to get away with it.

Typically, incoming freshman college students move in at the beginning of September, which in many places is much too soon to establish residence by the time the election rolls around in November.

I would bet that by sharing your experience on how you dealt with the problems of not having a fixed address from semester-to-semester, and keeping your driver's license and voting registration updated in the face of the various restrictions designed to prevent college students from voting, would be extremely helpful information for young people facing these problems.

So... how did you do it?

[Yonnie3]

5. I couldn't vote in '72

Two in state registrars both referred me to the other. I didn't get registered to vote until mid-1973 when I had time and finance to visit each several times in person.

My draft board had no such problem four years earlier.

[jberryhill]

6. Yes, that's true for many young people

But YOHABLO here says that you had no excuse, and that other young people in your situation have no excuse.

Your problem wasn't conflicting voting registrars, your problem was that you were a lazy no good young person who just didn't want to vote.

It cannot be the case that there are structural barriers against people who frequently move (like every semester) or do not have longstanding residences. YOHABLO has told us they have no excuse.

So I would like YOHABLO to explain why your experience is invalid.

[kysrsoze]

3. They way many over 50 vote is the problem

Your idea is great if you want to send us all back to the dark ages. Voting habits are skewed to the right for those over 50. In 50 now, and I’m able to acknowledge that reality. I WANT younger voters engaged and voting.

[rownesheck]

7. My son turns 18 in April.

He is really apathetic toward lots of things, as I was at that age. I will force him to register to vote and will drag his arse to the voting booth in November. I will hope that he votes the way I would want him to, but I'll let him make his own decisions. I never voted until I was 28. I want him to embrace voting sooner than I did.

[jberryhill]

9. How long has he been residing at his current address?

And does he intend to be residing there next November?

[DFW]

8. My daughters are 34 and 36

Believe me, they vote!

[Act_of_Reparation]

10. Why do you think Millennials and Gen Z don't vote?

[jberryhill]

11. Because they are substantially less likely to have a fixed residence long enough

The procedural deck is stacked against people who move a lot, are residing at college in a jurisdiction which does not consider them residents, are in informal sublease rentals, and a host of other conditions that old judgmental farts on DU completely have forgotten about, but which are structural barriers to registering to vote where they happen to be living.

[Hortensis]

13. Well, in 1996 we took some boys to see Independence Day,

a matinee showing that was full of children, and when the White House was blown up most children all over the theater cheered. (!)

This was in Southern California, an overall conservative-leaning community for that area, but pretty ordinary for the nation. To put it mildly, I was shocked and horrified. (But at least none of the 5 my neighbor and I brought were among them.)

They came to mind because those children are now millennials and have been eligible to vote for some time.

Look to the parents and the messages of the era they were brought up in. This was definitely long past the George Washington and the cherry tree-type nonsense for children. Instead, messages of "evil big government," "crooked politicians" (what other kind is there?), and "radical liberal Democrats" covered the nation in a political miasma, enabled by new information technology and funded by our new centimillionaire/billionaire classes. All with the intention of defeating the electorate, as was obvious even back then.

[Hortensis]

12. Percentages of younger voters are rising.

But certainly if they'd risen earlier, everything would be different. I remember a political scientist pointing out back in W's days that a mere 5% increase in younger Democratic voters would change everything. Didn't happen.

The day I turned 21 I changed my mind and had my husband treat me to a hot fudge sundae at C.C. Brown's on Sunset instead of my first legal entry and drink at a bar (ho-hum); and the first election, a midterm the next year, I voted. That was post 1968 when "America's innocence ended," and all that nonsense, and the noisy disaffection of some was even noisier than now. But I'd grown up very poor and never had whatever innocence that was supposed to have been to lose, and I was never so stupid that I didn't realize that the people who voted really did choose who'd get great power.