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Low Voter Turnout

By Emma Calvert, Staff Writer

Voter turnouts tend to fluctuate over the years due to many different factors–including the demographic of the voters. Most of those who aren’t turning out to vote are younger voters, ages 18-29, who make up 21% of our country’s population for voting. To improve voter turnout, the government is trying to make it easier to registrate. But in the most recent election, voter turnout decreased significantly.  This is due to our generation, who are eligible to vote, not voting. Only 20.9% of people 18-29 voted, less than a quarter, in the Midterm elections of 2014.  Factors include for the low voter turnout of young people is the difficulty of registration, ease of access to polls, no candidates or measures which seem to be worth voting for, and the fact that some younger people don’t realize that their vote is actually important. A major factor in low voter turnout is that an ID is required to vote, but many younger people lack the “proper” identification, which results in them not being able to vote.

Younger people tend to be more liberal, voting for Democratic candidates, while older voters normally vote Republican. The Republicans winning majority in the Senate during the midterm elections is very likely due to the low voter turnout–if younger, eligible voters had a higher turnout, Democrats could have potentially kept a majority in the Senate or at least closed the huge gap between Republican and Democrat wins.

A little over a third of California voted– two thirds of California’s eligible voters chose not to vote in the midterm elections. The New York Times reported that this was the worst voter turnout in 72 years. Voting is essential for the government to hear the people’s opinion on issues, so our country can progress in the direction its citizens want.

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