Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo
A student votes in a budget participation election at Maryvale High School in Phoenix, March 2020.
The Open Mind explores the world of ideas across politics, media, science, technology, and the arts. Host Alexander Heffner interviews John Holbein, a University of Virginia professor and co-author of Making Young Voters: Converting Civic Attitudes Into Civic Action. The American Prospect is republishing this edited excerpt.
Alexander Heffner: Young people are missing in action every midterm cycle to the extent that there’s a downturn in overall voter turnout. [But] they did show up for midterms in 2018.
John Holbein: At least 31 percent of young people did in 2018. There was a lot of discussion about the March for Our Lives movement and all the great efforts that they did to try and get out the youth vote and the many other organizations that pushed for young people to turn out in 2018.
The harsh reality is that even in that election, the high watermark from midterm election and youth voting, seven in ten young people didn’t turn out to vote. The types of people who were staying home were young minorities: socially, socioeconomically disadvantaged young people, the types of people whose voices we really want to hear in our democracy, just weren’t showing up. So it was an exciting change, for sure, but still a lot of room for growth.
Heffner: What are the dynamics at play this cycle of 2020 that might really create a tsunami of interest? And do you think that even amid the pandemic, there [will be] more of a motivation to follow through?
Holbein: What we’re seeing is that young people are interested and desire to participate in the process. The early data that we have from some of the primaries and caucuses that happened before the pandemic outbreak occurred was not great for young people. Still, despite high levels of interest in survey data, we’re still seeing big gaps by age and in places like New Hampshire, Iowa, and the other primaries and caucuses that have occurred.
There’s a lot of interest out there among young people to be engaged in 2020, and beyond, potentially. But it’s just not bearing fruit, right, it’s there [but] there’s some gap. What our book explores is how to get young people from a state of being sort of interested talking about things online, mobilizing in the streets, to actually getting to the ballot box where their voices can make a big difference.
Heffner: What do you find to be the most effective vehicle for that material action—media campaigns, conventional grassroots organizing, something else?
Holbein: So it’s a two-pronged approach. It’s changing fundamentally how we talk about voting and being an active citizen in schools, right? It starts with the public-school system and the school system as whole. The public schools for a long time have had this obligation and responsibility to train up the next generation of active citizens.
They’ve been doing their best, but there’s some evidence that suggests that they could do more. So it’s rethinking civics education such that young people are taught the skills, and knowledge, and experience they need to engage in politics now rather than just focusing on politics 200 years ago. You know, the founding fathers’ history.
Those things are important, but so is talking about contemporary political issues and gaining the skills and knowledge that young people need to participate. So it’s a fundamental rethinking of the civic education structure training young people in schools to be active voters.
The second piece of it is rethinking the process of voting. A lot of the reason why young people don’t turn out and vote is because they see voting and registration as overly complex and difficult and foreign to them. Reforms that make registration easier—such as same-day registration that allow young people to register when they show up at the ballot box (if they missed a voter registration deadline) and other reforms that make registration more transparent and easy—increase youth voter participation quite a bit.
So number one is teaching young people the skills and knowledge they need to participate. Number two is making the voting process more streamlined, more transparent and easier. Given that young people really want to engage, these types of things will actually help them follow through on that.
The evidence that we have on vote-by-mail suggests that young people really latch onto this reform.
Heffner: In that second category, you allude subtly to the idea of innovative, new innovative methods to the vote. Of course, there is the effort under way to expand and protect the franchise through universal mail balloting, in every state so that young people, students, [anybody] can mail their ballot or bring it to their local elections office, do that a week in advance, or if there’s a window, a month in advance, Those are some technical changes to the voting system. But what about a more ambitious project like the expansion of balloting to be online one day?
Holbein: The evidence that we have on vote-by-mail suggests that young people really latch onto this reform. There’s great evidence out of the state of Washington, which implemented its universal vote-by-mail system a couple of years ago that suggests that young people when given the opportunity to vote by mail, it increases the chances that they’ll go vote. They spring into action.
We don’t have a lot of great evidence on electronic voting yet because it’s just not a new idea, but it just hasn’t been implemented in as many locations to test it for its effects. We do see it in places like Estonia and other places in Europe where some of the concerns that people voice about voting online don’t come to fruition.
The big concern here is about electoral security protecting the process itself. As we’ve seen in previous elections though, just because we have ballot boxes at polling locations, it doesn’t mean that we are immune from electoral security issues. It’s an area that has a lot of promise. In general, young people when given the opportunity, when voting registration is made easier, they spring into action. It would be consistent with the research that we’ve done to say that something like online voting would really help.
