As the nation inches closer to Nov. 4, the election barnstorm will continue barreling forward at full speed. With the presidential candidates debating at Belmont University next month, Nashville will be, for a time, front and center during the election. The youth vote campaigns that reached Nashville last weekend were not surprising, but there were some disturbing implications that accompanied it.
As reported in the Hustler, Vanderbilt has a chapter of the Student Association for Voter Empowerment, which seeks to educate young voters and increase voter registration among the 18- to 24-year-old age demographic. According to the director of SAVE, junior Cameron Pastrick, the fact that only 13 percent of students eligible to vote do so is both "frightening" and "avoidable," especially since two-thirds of people over the age of 65 vote.
The fact that so few young people choose not to vote is not a sign for concern. Most young, college-aged people probably do not vote for a variety of reasons. Some do not find it worthwhile to make it to the polls on Election Day, and others do not know or care enough about the issues to see a reason to vote.
This fact alone should not bother us. As members of a free society, we should not value voting for the sake of voting. An educated vote is worth much more than an uneducated one. Since most younger voters are arguably less interested and less educated about issues like terrorism, health care and taxes, it does little to better our society by getting more young adults to the polls.
"Get out the vote" operations like SAVE and Rock the Vote claim to make voter education a top priority. There is a problem, however, with having a group work on both voter registration and voter education. No matter how often these groups reinforce that they are "non-partisan," inevitably the biases will reveal themselves somewhere during the education process. These operations will inevitably have some sort of agenda that distorts the education young voters who care enough about the issues should be getting for themselves.
We should be content with the number of young voters, no matter how high or how low, because that number will undoubtedly reflect which young voters are engaged in the political process enough to use the privilege responsibly.
