this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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Boomers vote because they are already registered, know where to go, have transportation, have time to do it. They can go out the door on election day and just get it done.
Younger people, especially college age, aren't registered in the states they live in, have no idea how to get registered, have to go through a much more complicated process of absentee voting, and have to do much of these things well in advance. They are less likely to have transportation, or a schedule that allows them to do it.
Oh, and most importantly, we haven't given young people a candidate to get excited about in a general election in at least 40 years
If Democrats wanted to harness the power of young voters, they needed to give them Bernie.
Instead we got aptly-named Sleepy Joe.
Now we got what Boomers wanted: Bidenomics. Everyone claims Bidenomics is going well, but young people can't afford their loans, healthcare, childcare, or rent. So what's with all the cork-popping.
The fact is, were a nation in absolute crisis, and Democrat Boomers absolutely will not acknowledge it. They got their SUVs, stock portfolios, social security, houses, pensions, and medicare. So fuck everyone else.
I recently moved to a new area and got a card in the mail telling me my polling place. On election day I showed up and found out three districts use that building.
So I asked the volunteer which district I was in. He asked for my address, then said, "I don't know where that is". K thx, buddy. Then he whipped out a 20 year outdated paper map and asked me to find my house. The street wasn't even there! After finally stepping out of line (and some exasperated groans of relief behind me) I did 15 minutes of frantic googling to find my district. Then I had to go to the back of the line and wait again.
I was lucky I had the day off work for all that nonsense. Most people don't have that luxury.
This is why we need to push for universal mail in ballots
In my state we do mail in ballots for everyone and it's great, I can literally take days to look over the measures and people before I have to turn it in.
Yes! I live in California and my ballot comes right to my mailbox. I usually visit a polling center a block away to mail it, but I've also run out of time and stuck it in the mail. You can track if it was received with a ballot tracking system.
Voting is so easy in California. It's almost harder not to vote with this system in place. Like, you'd really have to be against it.
Jesus, so you had the right place all along? That is fucked... We're you able to vote? What did you tell them the second time through?
Usually they have your name on a list, and they check it off.
At our election I just walked to a nearby school which had the voting and waited in a queue for a while (it was unusually slow this time because of some changes in how the voting process went) in the end you hand a person your vote and they cross your name of a list and then they put the vote in a box.
There were three different lists and boxes in the voting room but everyone got mail beforehand that said which list you should go to.
All in all, it went very smoothly.
Also voting districts are only used for statistics and logistic purposes. So the insane practice of gerrymandering doesn't exist.
Uhh what ? That sounds like a lot of people in the same voting building
That is the normal case in Germany. Our small town has about 10 districts and they all use the school, but spread over different rooms in different parts of the building. Your invitation contains your district number and there's ample pointer where to find which district. And in case you lost your invitation and have no idea about your district, we can always look you up in the voter list, which contains all adult residents.
I take it your districts are bigger than several hundred people? In bigger cities we use several buildings, but any voting place should still be able to direct you to the right district. In case the local volunteers are unsure, they can always call the voting office, which contains the guys that planned everything and they clear things up, but that's rarely necessary.
There might have been a misunderstanding. I understood "district" as in congressional districts as that's usually what it means in the context of US election. Here in France we also have several "voting desks" (bureau de vote) in the same building, but I didn't know these were also called districts in English
How the fuck do you not know how to get registered? You can do it online. You can do it at the DMV. You can do it when you actually go to a polling place to vote. When I turned 18, I got a ton of mail to register to vote and register for selective service provided by both the state and the federal government (meaning I had duplicates).
It does piss me off that some states/counties don't have mail-in ballots. That is some bullshit. I can see why it's not made available online, but to not mail every single registered citizen a ballot in the mail is fucking bonkers.
You cannot register to vote online in 8 US states, all of which have Republican governors and Republican control of the state legislature:
I don't know what "being registered to vote" means exactly in the US, but intuitively it sounds like an unnecessary level of complication and an undemocratic practice.
Not that my country (Italy) can be taken as an example, but even being it the paradigm of red tape and overcomplicating things, people automatically get a voting card wherever they're living and they vote.
It feels like there's room for improvement tbh.
We know.
Ignorance on where or how to vote is not an excuse. You can Google this information. Also, you are prompted to register when you do your taxes.
Now, getting time off to vote may be. Also, long lines in areas that are incompetent and/or deliberately manipulated by political motives is another issue... Young people with jobs often don't have time for that.
Anyone on the entire west coast has ZERO excuse, however, since they mail the ballots straight to you, and you mail them straight back.
I do lament Bernie not getting the primary... I voted in that, and it was a crippling blow to see Joe win it. That said, the current situation isn't Joe Biden's doing. It's a global economic issue. It's true Bernie would be doing more for the lower classes, but there would still be suffering.
The time off and long lines will vary heavily where you livem early voting in my state has always made it easy for me to get to a polling place on day off.
I voted for Bernie in both primaries. To this day I believe he would have beaten trump in 2016. That being said DNC fuckery or not... Not enough young people came out and voted for him in the primaries. So like it or not... that doesn't seem to be an example of this.
Again I fully agree on the whole we need the dems to actually send someone who understands the needs of millenials and earlier generations. Bernie did that better than anyone before him, but at the end of the day we need better grass roots systems to get people out to vote in the primary if we can get another candidate like Bernie (can say its safe to say bernie is past the point of being able to run for president.
It's not exclusive to the USA though, and in countries with higher turnouts, more younger people vote as well.
https://archive.is/y8scJ
Purely anecdotal, but when I was younger, I really didn't give a shit about politics, all I was interested in was getting mashed at raves every weekend
Nice excuses