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Presidential Election 2004:
Young People and Voting
by Alan Shapiro
To the Teacher:
In the 1972 presidential election (Nixon vs. McGovern), 49.6% of Americans aged 18-24 voted. By 2000, the number had dropped to 32.4%. Surveys show that young people are disaffected with the political system, perceive voting as "a waste of time," and don't think schools do a very good job in giving them the information and basic skills they need to vote. All this is, of course, of concern to teachers.
Below is a questionnaire you might ask students to respond to. Following it is information relating to student responses and suggestions for the classroom. These may prove helpful in getting students to consider why young people do or do not vote, what issues most concern them, and what their school might do better to encourage them to vote and to equip them to do so intelligently.
Student Survey
Voting: What do you think?
Answer the following questions with either (Y) yes, (N) or (DK) don't know.
1. Did your parents or guardians vote in any of the recent elections--the 2000 presidential election? the 2002 Congressional election? the 2003 local election?
2. If you are or will be 18 before the election, will you vote? If you will be under 18, would you vote if you could?
3. Do you think this school does a very good job of giving you the information and skills you need to vote?
4. Do you believe that politicians pay attention to what concerns you?
Answer the following questions briefly.
5. Do you talk about politics, government, and current events with your parents or guardians? If so, how often?
6. If you will or would vote if you could in 2004, why or why not?
7. Where would you look first if you wanted reliable information on a candidate or political issue?
8. Check the items on the following list that might get you to vote for a candidate if you thought the politician had worthwhile things to say on the issue and had a record you could support.
__Abortion
__Budget
__Capital punishment
__Children
__Corporate crime
__Crime
__Drugs
__Education
__Environment
__Guns
__Health
__Housing
__Immigration
__Iraq
__Jobs
__Minimum wage
__National security
__Poverty
__Racism
__Taxes
__Violence
__Others: _____________________________________
Below is information from the New Millennium Young Voters Project, the Heinz Family Foundation's The Democracy Project, and the U.S. Census, which gives an indication of young people's responses to the survey questions.
- The factor that most determines whether a young person will vote is whether his or her parents vote. Age and education are also factors.
- More than half of the young people surveyed say schools don't do a very good job of giving young people the information and basic skills they need to vote.
- Many young people think voting is a waste of time because they do not think that voting affects what politicians do and they believe politicians pay no attention to their concerns.
- Almost half of the young people surveyed said they never or almost never talked about politics, government or current events with their parents.
- Many young people are especially concerned about the following: their community, children, education, crime, violence, the environment.
- 19% of young people say they look to the internet first for reliable information on candidates and elections.
- Fewer than one in three young people between the ages of 18 and 21 vote.
- In the 2000 presidential election, 51% of eligible voters voted, up from 49% in 1996.
Classroom suggestions
1. The class survey
Report its results to students. Then organize a fish bowl, which will enable the entire class to be engaged in small-group dialogue.
Invite a half dozen students representing diverse points of view to begin the conversation. Ask them to make a circle with their chairs in the middle of the room. Everyone else is to make a circle of chairs around the fish bowl to form a larger circle around the inner circle. Only people in the fish bowl can speak. Other students are to listen carefully.
The teacher can begin the conversation with a question. For example, If you could vote in the 2004 presidential election, would you? Why or why not?
Ask students to respond in a "go-around," each speaking to the question in turn without interruption. The teacher can then designate a specific amount of time for clarifying questions and further comments.
After 15 minutes or so, invite students from the larger circle to participate in the fish bowl conversation by tapping a fish bowl student on the shoulder and moving into that student's seat.
Additional questions might include:
- What issues concern you most and why?
- What specifically is this school doing or not doing to give you the information and skills you need to vote?
2. Issues
Determine in a class discussion and vote what students regard as the three issues of most concern to them in the coming presidential election. Try to determine:
- How well-informed are they on each issue?
- What aren't the sure about?
- What are they misinformed about?
- Where does their information come from?
- What positions on these issues do they take?
- What questions do they have?
Begin a study of issues in the 2004 presidential race and the candidates' statements and records on them. Students will probably need help on sources of information, including the internet, TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. See "Website Resources for Information and Opinion" in the activity Presidential Election, 2004: From Start to Finish, available on this website, for some suggestions. For questions that might be raised about each medium, see #3 under "Other Activities" in the same website materials.
Students should be aware that in gathering information, they must always question the source's accuracy and reliability. Among the questions worth considering are:
- What is the source of this information?
- What reasons, if any, do I have to question the accuracy of the information?
- If what I see, read or hear is supposed to be factual but I have doubts about it, what other sources might verify or refute it?
- If what I am getting is someone's opinion, why should I accept it?
- If the source is supposed to be an expert, what are this person's qualifications?
- What reasons, if any, are there that the person might be biased?
- If I determine that there are reasons for possible bias, does this mean that the opinions are worthless? Why or why not?
In considering information from any source, students should also be aware that there can be errors of omission as well as of commission. Questions include:
- Is it conceivable that there are reasonable opinions and arguments that are not being represented in what I am reading/hearing? What are they?
- Are there good alternative sources of information on this subject?
- Would people in other countries or from other backgrounds likely have a different point of view from the one I am encountering? If so, how can I find an expression of that point of view?
- Do I have any reason to think that important information about this issue has been omitted? What are those reasons?
- If I think there have been errors of omission, what other sources might correct them?
Students should scrutinize what candidates have to say on issues that concern them. On some issues--for example, health care-candidates' views may be spelled out in some detail. On other issues--for example, education--they may be more general.
Some questions to consider:
- How well does the candidate clarify an issue? If the issue is, say, the environment, how clearly does the candidate define any problems?
- What, exactly, would the candidate do about them?
- How much realistic detail does the candidate provide? For example, does the candidate show an understanding that there are often conflicting views between industrialists, workers, and environmentalists on a specific policy like clean air? (See the recent Bush decision supported by industrialists and opposed by environmentalists on that issue.)
- Does the candidate seem to understand that there may be economic consequences to a decision, that more than one point of view may deserve consideration?
- On positions the candidate takes, students might also consider:
- Does the candidate oversimplify complex issues?
- Does the candidate demonstrate an awareness that there are socioeconomic, racial and other differences in the country?
- Does the candidate appeal to emotions rather than to intelligence?
- Who benefits and who doesn't if a candidate's plan goes into effect?
- How well does the candidate's actual record support what he or she is now saying on an issue?
3. Voting
Do the results of the class questionnaire suggest that students in this class view voting "as a waste of time"? If so, this attitude may deserve exploration beyond the fish bowl discussion suggested above.
a. Family Poll
Have students take an informal poll of family members and friends, especially any between 18 and 24, on two questions:
- Does this person plan to vote in the presidential election?
- Why or why not?
Students should record the results and discuss them in small groups as well as with the class as a whole:
- What have students learned?
- Have their own views changed as a result?
- Why or why not?
b. Historical Inquiry
For example:
What is known about how and why voting developed in ancient Greece?
What happens to voting in a dictatorship and why? (for example: Germany or the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s, Zimbabwe or Cuba today)
4. Action
a. Students poll ten people aged 18-24, asking two questions:
- Do you expect to vote in the 2004 presidential election?
- Why or why not?
Student pollers take notes and report findings in detail to class, followed by discussion.
b. Students prepare a newspaper or magazine on the results of their poll along with articles and commentary on issues and candidates-then distribute the publication in the school.
c. Students organize an assembly on issues they have studied and judge to be most important to students in their school. Possibly include representatives from local presidential campaign headquarters.
d. Students interviews workers for presidential candidates at local campaign headquarters. What are the campaign workers' responses to student questions on the issues students regard as most important? What is the local headquarters doing to get young people to vote?
e. Students volunteer to work at local campaign headquarters and keep a journal of their experiences.
5. A closing evaluation
Ask students to respond in writing to the following questions:
- Has out work changed your attitude toward voting? If so, why and how? If not, why not?
- If you were/are voting in the 2004 presidential election, do you think you are better equipped to do so now than you were earlier? If so, why and how? If not, why not?
- If you were to make one suggestion to get out the youth vote, what would that be?
Tell students you will report back to them in summary form what they have written and then do so, giving students an opportunity to discuss any issues that have arisen.
Useful Sources
See PBS NOW with Bill Moyers at pbs.org/now/classroom/democracy.html for information and links to sites about voting, voter turnout statistics, efforts to promote voting, etc.
See declareyourself.com for voter information for young people. The site's goals are to increase the number of registered young voters by at least two percentage points and to teach young people everything they need to know about how to register, absentee ballots, learning about campaign issues, polling places and how to vote on Election Day. In March 2004 the site will make available in newspapers in 42 states and for free downloading educational material on these matters. Teachers can sign up for further information. Already the site has updated material on candidates, parties and organizations, among them those with a special interest in the youth vote.
This
essay was written for TeachableMoment.Org, a project of Morningside
Center for Teaching Social Responsibility. We welcome
your comments. Please email them to: lmcclure@morningsidecenter.org.
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