E-Mail This Article to a Friend Will young voters deliver for Kerry? (continued)

SUCH ENTREATIES notwithstanding, young people have opted out of the political system in increasing numbers ever since the Vietnam War era, when those under 21 could fight and die for their country, but didn’t have a voice in choosing its leaders — a glaring contradiction that delivered the vote to 18-year-olds in 1972. As West says, "The Vietnam War made politics central to the lives of young people in the 1970s. They could be drafted and they could be sent to Vietnam, so they had a very personal stake in political decisions."

Even before 1972, though, younger Americans voted at lower rates. Voting is something of an acquired habit, says Patterson, and young people tend to be more transient, less rooted, and otherwise less engaged with the civic life of a community. "It’s just a period in the life cycle when there’s more me-centeredness than we-centeredness," he says. "It was as true in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s as it is today."

But two contemporary factors have further eroded the traditionally low voting patterns among young people: the absence of a defining geo-political paradigm since the end of the Cold War, and the fragmentation of the media following upon the proliferation of nontraditional sources of information such as cable television and the Internet. As Patterson notes, the relative peace and prosperity of the ’90s did little to draw people into the public arena. Also, at one time many young people would develop a news habit that fostered an interest in politics before they reached voting age. But now that fewer young people read newspapers, and the way they get information tends to blur news and entertainment, only about 20 to 25 percent of young people have a news habit. "If you don’t have a news habit," Patterson says, "you’re not likely to get a well-honed political interest."

At the University of Rhode Island, Tom Angell, a senior active with Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, is more political than the typical college student. "I definitely think there will be an increase in the number of young people voting," in large part because of Iraq, he says. "It definitely particularly affects young people. Those in harm’s way are college-age people. It personally gives me pause to stop and think about what our country’s policies are doing to our young people. I know a lot of other young people feel the same way."

Still, even though college students and the affluent are more likely to vote, Providence city councilmember David Segal recalls getting the cold shoulder from a surprising number of Brown University students and residents of the surrounding neighborhood, Providence’s prosperous East Side, when he campaigned in 2002. "It’s a principle of theirs not to vote," he says. "They believe that voting is not worth a damn. They think it’s contributing to some system that’s already forsaken them." Although not without some sympathy for such views, Segal — who went on to win a four-way race by about 280 votes — tried to convince these cynics that each vote was important.

It’s far more difficult to make that case to low-income youth. "Frankly, I don’t find any sense of hope from these kids in terms of the system in general," says Bert Crenca, the artistic director of the nonprofit arts organization AS220, who also works with young people at the Rhode Island Training School juvenile correctional facility. Whether it’s George W. Bush or John Kerry, "I don’t think that there’s much change that can come out of it for them in the end," Crenca says. Even at youth poetry slams, "very little of the material that I hear talks about creating change within the system. I don’t hear it from them. I hear them talk about the system as if it’s something they’re very apart from, and I don’t know that it has changed in years. In some ways, I think young people are even more disenfranchised" because of the widening gap between rich and poor.

The disparity between who votes and who doesn’t explains why politicians spend so much time talking about Social Security, Medicare, prescription drugs, and catering to the middle class, rather than taking up the concerns of young people and the working class. As West says, "The problem for people who don’t vote is that nobody pays attention to their issues.... Politicians just don’t take young people as seriously because there’s no penalty for ignoring their issues."

This profound lack of political engagement looms large for young activists like 27-year-old Matthew Jerzyk, currently an organizer with the New England Health Care Employees Union, District 1199’s effort to get home-based day-care workers recognized as state employees in Rhode Island. "I think the growing separation between the American electorate and the American people is by far the greatest condemnation of the failure of democracy than anything else you can point to," he says.

Certainly, nonvoters deserve a share of the blame, but Jerzyk takes it a step further. "A political system that produces indifference isn’t a healthy system," he says. "Before they turn 18 and after they turn 18, why aren’t we engaging young people, teaching them to vote? That seems very basic. Instead, they turn 18, and the draft [registration] card comes in the mail. We’re ready to put them on the frontlines of war, but are we giving them the tools to participate in democracy?"

With less than five months before the November presidential election, a variety of organizations are trying to do just that. The question now is, will their efforts bring more young people to the ballot box, and if so, to what effect?