The vote rocks
It’s not very sexy to vote, we admit. You can’t go into the voting booth with your buddies … or with your skateboard. There’s no Avril Levigne music blaring from a loudspeaker. They don’t serve pizza and Mountain Dew Code Red.
And yet, if you’re 18, there aren’t a whole lot of things more important than having your say at the polls.
Who wins on Nov. 5 can determine what your rivers and streams will look like 10 years from now, how the job market will shape up five years from now, even whether or not you’ll be sent to fight in a war in Iraq one year from now.
Study after study brings the dismal news that teen-agers and young adults are staying away from the electoral process in droves.
It’s not from lack of effort by adults. The older generation has tried countless tactics to reverse the trend.
The Newspaper Association of America has endorsed a non-political project called “Freedom’s Answer,” which encourages students to participate in a national competition to see how many voters they can get to the polls.
Several schools in Fayette County are participating in the project, supported by the Secondary School Principal’s Association and the National Association of Student Councils.
Newspapers across the nation are supporting the effort through their Newspaper in Education programs by recruiting schools and students as participants.
Freedom’s Answer is a non-political, nonpartisan effort to achieve the highest voter turnout in history for a non-presidential election.
More information on the program can be found on the Internet at: http://freedomsanswer.net.
For the past dozen years, an organization known as Rock the Vote has devoted itself to lighting a political fire under young people.
With support from such megastars as Mary J. Blige, LL Cool J, Bono and Sting, Rock the Vote has used the power of music to emphasize civic participation and communal activism.
In 2000, the group sponsored a 25-city, four-month bus tour to educate and register young voters. That year, it also registered 164,000 new voters on its Web site, www.rockthevote.org.
All of this helps, of course, but it can’t happen in a vacuum.
Younger voters have to be made to feel that elected officials will hear their concerns and act on them. Mom and Dad have a role to play, too.
Parents teach their children the alphabet and teach them how to swim and drive. How many take the time and effort to teach their children how to be responsible citizens?
The answer can be as simple as taking a 4-year-old into the voting booth with you and showing him how to pull the lever. The answer also can be planning a special dinner to commemorate a teen-ager’s first vote, or marking the occasion with a small gift.
For this thing called democracy to succeed, it takes effort. It should go without saying, but we’ll say it anyway: Kids won’t vote if they don’t see their parents voting.