Talk aims to encourage young adults to vote

OLYMPIA — Young adults may not vote, but that doesn’t mean they’re not engaged citizens, said experts on youth and politics.

WSU’s Foley Institute hosted its annual Olympia symposium recently, partnering with the Washington Secretary of State’s office and Henry M. Jackson Foundation to discuss “Disengaged Youth: Encouraging Millennials to Vote.”

Mel Netzhammer, chancellor of WSU-Vancouver and one of the four panelists, remembered registering to vote right after turning 18.

“In my generation, casting that first vote was the defining moment. It meant we were adults. Believing every vote counts is a core tenet of my generation,” Netzhammer said. “That is not a core tenet of Millennials at all.”

The Millennial generation includes those born between the 1980s and 2000s. Voters between age 18 to 24 had a 41 percent turnout rate in 2012, compared to 66 percent of those age 30 and older, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). 

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, CIRCLE’s deputy director, said only about a quarter of young adults feel political involvement is an effective way to make a difference.

“They’d rather do things like engage in social entrepreneurship, volunteering, or work in a non-profit,” she said.

Netzhammer said voting and civic engagement shouldn’t be combined.

“I think part of what we need to do is separate voting and participation in the electoral process from active civic engagement,” Netzhammer said. “Because I think increasingly, our students are more and more and more committed to civic engagement.”

Netzhammer said he was used to seeing the financial aid table as the most popular at student fairs, but recently noticed the volunteering information booth was most crowded.

He shared an example of students who took action to remove apparel produced by sweatshops from the campus bookstore.

“They can see a very immediate return on that investment,” Netzhammer said. “When they vote, it’s more removed from them.”

Some panelists said there needed to be more of an emphasis on civic education in classrooms. Netzhammer said that, in colleges, there had been an increased demand to focus on job preparation.

“As we have done that, I think one of the cons is we have really become distracted from the idea that part of the role of higher education is to prepare this next generation of active citizens,” he said.

High schools also have prioritized other subjects, especially less controversial ones, Kawashima-Ginsberg said.

“Some of the answers teachers gave us were: We have so many things to do, and if there isn’t testing on civics, that’s going to be pushed aside. And when I want to talk about politics with my students, the parents get upset,” she said.

Lindsay Pryor, a voting outreach specialist from the Secretary of State’s office, noted that Washington state now has a civic education requirement. In order to graduate high school, the class of 2016 will have to learn about topics such as the state’s initiative process, current issues, and the constitution.

Kawashima-Ginsberg said some states lowered the voting age to 17, which allowed students to discuss ballot issues while they were still in class and living at home, where they could talk with their families about politics. If the habit was formed early, people would likely continue voting.

Pryor said reducing “mudslinging” in campaigns could also help youth turnout, especially for undecided or moderate voters.

“If you keep hearing about how awful Candidate X is, and how terrible Candidate Y is, well then, why would you vote for either one of them,” she said.

Candidates also don’t connect well with young people, panelists said. Not only do Millennials feel they aren’t represented, candidates don’t often reach out to them, Toby Crittenden said, executive director of the Washington Bus, an organization that encourages youth political involvement.

He said it was important to connect young adults’ daily experiences with relevant political issues, rather than telling them what political issues to care about.

“The point is to have people’s lived experiences filter in,” Crittenden said. “If you want to talk about bus service, you are talking about who was elected, levies that are going to be on the ballot. These are not things that happen separate from each other, but if we frame it as ‘politics’ we lose more people than we really should.”

Panelists pointed out that Millennials aren’t all that different from previous generations. While they don’t have a single, unifying cause like the Baby Boomer’s Civil Rights or Greatest Generation’s World War II, they already are turning out to vote in higher numbers than Gen X did, Pryor said.

Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman was optimistic about the new crop of voters.

“I don’t think that young people are disengaged,” Wyman said. “I think that demographic, when I look at my two kids who are 22 and 19, I think you all are now pushing the envelope in a very different way.”