|
 No amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified so quickly following congressional approval than the 26th Amendment, which lowered the age of voting eligibility from 21 to 18. As a result, nearly half the registered voters aged 18 to 20 cast a ballot in the 1972 general election, which Richard Nixon won by 60 percent of the popular vote. Tragically, voter participation among 18- to 20-year-olds has never been so high since 1972, and has declined in every year, with the exception of the 1992 general election. Taking Back the Vote chronicles the decades-long movement to extend the franchise to young adults, reviews trends in voter participation among 18- to 20-year-olds, examines patterns and causes of political disillusionment among the cohort, and suggests reforms that might attract young adults to greater political involvement. These discussions are set in the paradoxical context that young people tend to be active and enthusiastic community-service volunteers despite their apparent apathy with respect to voting.
The author, Jane Eisner, is a syndicated columnist based at the Philadelphia Enquirer and a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Fox Leadership Program.
Taking Back the Vote opens with a history of the gradual expansion of the franchise in the United States, first including non-propertied citizens, next racial minorities, then women, and finally 18- to 20-year-olds. Eisner recounts that the youth-enfranchisement movement began in 1942 as the personal cause of Jennings Randolph, a Democratic U.S. Representative from West Virginia. In that year he introduced a constitutional amendment to lower the voting age to 18 in response to the Roosevelt administration's extension of draft eligibility to 18-year-olds. Thirty-nine years later, by then a member of the U.S. Senate, Randolph would witness, finally, the adoption of the 26th Amendment, following Ohio's ratification of the measure in June of 1971. The successful amendment was the eleventh he had introduced since first entering Congress in 1932. The proposed amendment succeeded during a period when the United States was again at war, in Vietnam, a far more controversial embroilment than World War II. It was also a period of intense political involvement among youth.
While the 26th Amendment enfranchised youth, it did nothing to streamline or reconcile the conflicting and diverse voter-registration rules and procedures of the various states. Young people could vote only if they could register, and significant barriers to registration - applying in particular to students who attended college out of state - hampered participation in the 1972 general election. (Student voter registration remains a question of considerable controversy-see Where Should Students Vote? The Courts, the States and Local Officials, by Kenneth L. Eshleman, University Press of America, 1989.)
By 1976, voting-age adults - young and old alike - seemed eager to forget about Vietnam, and voter participation began slipping among all age groups, with the exception of seniors. The nation's economy had entered a period of stagflation, induced in part by high petroleum costs, industrial restructuring and high insurance rates due to a swelling national debt. The ballot box, perhaps, seemed irrelevant to younger Americans who increasingly headed households where both spouses were forced to work in order to meet family expenses.
But the focus of Taking Back the Vote is the youngest segment of the voting-age population, consisting largely of un-emancipated, single 18- to 20-year-olds. While acknowledging the eagerness of members of Generation Y to engage in community service, Eisner bemoans their aversion to conventional politics to the point of degrading voluntarism to the status of futile avocation. [T]heir should be a real concern, she writes, that the Band-Aid, stopgap measures offered by episodic community service will relieve government - and by extension, the public - of the responsibility to feed the hungry, protect the environment, and school the next generation. In contradictory fashion, she declares elsewhere that voluntary service is necessary because government can't satisfy all social needs, and that volunteering can serve as a portal to political involvement. Throughout, however, Eisner insinuates that meaningful public involvement is political involvement. This is a weak basis on which to let young adults - or older adults, for that matter - of the hook on the question of community service. Whether serving on a nonprofit board or pitching in on a neighborhood cleanup, there's too much work to be done in our communities and regions. Whether at the polls on election day, or at a soup kitchen, we all need to be more involved.
Eisner's menu of remedies for the problem of low voter turnout among youth includes same-day voter registration, the elimination of in-state voting requirements for first-time voters, the establishment of Election Day as a national holiday, adoption of on-line (Internet) voting, and door-to-door canvassing of young registered voters. She also places faith in such efforts as Rock the Vote and Hip-Hop Summit, reasoning that politics must be drenched in the trivialities of pop culture to attract the attention of youth. (In an age when appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno or The Late Show with David Letterman seems de rigueur for presidential and gubernatorial candidates, she may, sadly, be correct. It is far more likely, however, that pandering to youth in this fashion does little to influence voter turnout.)
The fact is, young people don't vote because political campaigns don't address issues of importance to them, and candidates make few attempts to appeal to them or make them feel interested in public and community life. The last time a presidential candidate challenged young people to meaningful service and responsibility was in 1960. The more recent Americorps invitation to service soft-peddled the concept by dangling the bait of modest pay and grants for college tuition. Because youth don't vote, politicians tailor their platforms to the needs of the elderly and families with children, perhaps fueling a vicious cycle of youth apathy. And, when not offering goodies to these more active constituencies, candidates and officeholders generally expend energy soiling each other's reputations. Perhaps the blame for weak voter turnout among the young should be placed on the nature of political campaigns and policy dialogue in general. Given the practice of politics it's little wonder that youth are bypassing the polls and rolling up their sleeves to engage in tangible - and civil - public activity.
Do you agree with this review? E-mail your comments to .
|
