Keeping the Fires Burning: The Youth Vote in the 2010 Elections and Beyond

By Naomi Jackson

It’s no news that President Barack Hussein Obama’s election in 2008 was historic. The election was marked by the ascendance of the nation’s first African-American president; the highest amount of political campaign spending, including robust giving by small donors; and the fact that several traditionally conservative states went blue. After the initial euphoria waned, the 18 months that followed proved difficult. Aside from crushing unemployment, a double-digit recession, and a looming budget deficit, wins like health care reform were at best compromises. And while politicians wooed the rising Latino electorate with promises of immigration reform, the reality has been increasing numbers of deportations that tear apart families with mixed immigration status, a frustrating lack of action on comprehensive immigration reform, and most recently, the death of the DREAM Act on the Senate floor.

Deflated by all these disappointments, young people who were energized by the 2008 campaign—whether they were canvassing for the campaign or voting for the first time—have become disillusioned by the proverbial sausage-making of politics. Just 21 percent of 18- to 29-year-old eligible voters turned out for the 2010 midterm elections. Their absence was influenced by a number of factors. First, there was a profound lack of investment in engaging young voters in 2010. Second, there is still no coherent agenda that young people can rally behind. Finally, young people were turned off by the ongoing influence of money in politics, exacerbated by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, in which the court ruled, 5-4, that government may not prohibit corporate spending in political campaigns. One could presume that politicians are doing what we’d hoped that they wouldn’t—taking young people for granted and expecting them to show up as foot soldiers for the campaign and warm bodies at the polls in 2012.

Early 2011 finds large numbers of young people unemployed, defeated, and questioning the usefulness of attaining higher education and looking for work. However, there are bright spots. In 2010, African-American youth voted at equal rates to their white counterparts. Young people are organizing themselves, identifying their own issues, and putting pressure on elected officials to meet their demands for a just economy and political system that meets their needs and those of their communities. Young people’s priorities include employment, affordable and expanded access to higher education, and advancing solutions to climate change.

Empowering the youth electorate offers us an opportunity to engage young people who are as a whole more racially diverse, more likely to identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender,  less religious, and more inclined to favor gay marriage,  sex education, and providing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants than older Americans.

What will it take to ensure that young people, especially low-income youth of color, who were energized in 2008, keep their passion for civic engagement alive into 2012? Here are a few of my suggestions:

• Institute birthday voter registration programs to ensure that voting becomes an American rite of passage.
• Allow same-day voter registration in more states.
• Support voter engagement efforts that reach low-income youth of color where they are — in schools, at work, at home listening to urban radio, in the malls, on the streets.
• Encourage voter engagement and mobilization efforts that are designed and led by youth of color.
• Invest in early efforts by artists and influential individuals to inspire young people to participate in the democratic process.

Statistics taken from the CIRCLE (The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement) and Generational Alliance report, “Youth Voters in the 2010 elections,” published November 9, 2010.

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