Young People Electing Not to Cast Ballots

Each year Susan MacManus teaches a course in electoral politics, and each year she pulls out a photograph to make a crucial point.

The picture shows a line of South Africans, stretching half a mile beneath a blazing sun. Some are on crutches, others sit limply in wheelchairs. They are waiting to vote.

MacManus, a professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, tells her students: “You take voting for granted. These people went without food and water for a whole day to exercise a right you just give away.”

There is an urgency in the professor’s voice as she shares this story. Young people have always been less likely than older Americans to vote, but today’s youths are absent from the polls at higher rates than any generation before them, scholars say.

Not only do they avoid the polls, they also have little interest in running for office--deterred, surveys show, by the inevitable scrutiny of their private lives and the prospect of raising the considerable cash they would need to campaign.

Historically, America’s young have dribbled into the electorate as they grew up and settled down. Youthful preoccupations--such as college and the search for a job and a significant other--fade, while home ownership, property taxes and having children in public schools theoretically supplies motivation to vote.

“But with this group we’re wondering, ‘They are so alienated, will they ever join in?’ ” said Diana Owen, a Georgetown University political scientist who studies young voters.

For those who study government, it’s not a minor question:

“Where is the leadership for tomorrow?” asked Curtis Gans, director of the Washington-based Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. As turnout falls, “we’re heading for a future politics dominated by zealots with self-interest as their motive.”

Other experts say youths themselves pay a price when they don’t vote. Politicians know young people “are not a constituency that will rise up if their government benefits are cut,” said Boston College political scientist Kay Schlozman. So programs such as student loans take a back seat to Medicare and Social Security.

Temporary Change in Downward Trend

As with voters of all ages, turnout by the young has been falling over time, though at a steeper rate than for that of older Americans. In 1972, the year the nation’s voting age was lowered to 18, turnout among 18- to 24-year-olds was 42%. By the presidential election in 1996, it had dipped to 29%.

The only blip in the downward trend came in 1992. That year, presidential candidate Bill Clinton and his running mate visited campuses and talked about education, the environment and national service programs for the young.

Rock the Vote--a Santa Monica-based nonpartisan organization--launched a nationwide campaign to increase registration and voting among youths. MTV aired hours of campaign coverage; politics almost seemed cool.

Turnout by the young surged to 42%. But by the next election it had tumbled yet again.

Why are America’s youths less interested than ever in politics? The reasons are many, and murky.

One explanation mirrors that offered for the decline in turnout overall: People are busy and doubt that voting has any real impact on their lives.

Others say members of Generation X--reared in post-Watergate times--have rarely heard a good word about government. What was a noble profession is now derided as a world of opportunistic fat cats, philanderers and cheats.

Surveys measuring Americans’ faith in government underscore this point. In 1990, 43% of those ages 18 to 29 said they trust the government to do what’s right “most of the time.” In January of this year, only 29% gave that answer.

“This generation doesn’t distinguish the system from the politicians, who they see as corrupt and evil,” said Donna Frisby, executive director of Rock the Vote.

Politicians and their parties make things worse. Increasingly, campaign strategists court only a narrow band of voters and virtually ignore everyone else.

“Young people don’t vote because no one talks to them, and no one talks to them because they don’t vote,” MacManus said.

Some researchers believe that the disappearance of civics classes from American schools during the last 30 years figures into all of this. “The truth is, socially conscious behavior is not innate, it’s a learned disposition,” said Stephen Bennett, co-author of “After the Boom: The Politics of Generation X.”

In response, groups such as the American Political Science Assn. are searching for ways to make voting relevant to a generation with no memories of war, a draft or civil rights struggles.

At Rock the Vote, Frisby believes that the key to motivating the young is linking politics to everyday life. Toward that end, the organization is producing public service announcements featuring youths who have found success through the political system.

One example: a group of Santa Cruz skateboarders who lobbied the city to build a skateboard park after they were banned from the streets. Coming in January: a guide instructing youths how to become activists in their community.