Monday, October 12, 1998
Decline in voting rate for youths worries groups
ELECTIONS: Busy schedules, apathy, confusing registration may
explain lack of activism
By Catherine Turner
Daily Bruin Contributor
A determined Holly Hogan stood in front of Rieber Hall Monday
night, attempting to get as many students as possible to register
to vote before the deadline that evening.
‘People our age are portrayed negatively, and by not voting we
keep feeding that image,’ said Hogan, a volunteer for Voter
Registration Week and first-year political science student.
‘We’re trying to get people to register to vote to create a
positive image,’ she said.
Voter turnout for Americans between age 18 and 29 has been
decreasing since the 1960s, and programs like Voter Registration
Week are working to reverse this trend.
Volunteers working for Voter Registration Week successfully
registered over 1,000 UCLA students.
The program made registration materials available to students,
who otherwise would have had to fill out absentee ballots sent to
their permanent homes.
It also provided an accessible place where they could ask
questions.
‘Maybe the reason that stats say that the youth doesn’t vote is
because we have moved away to college and all have a change of
address,’ Hogan said.
Programs such as Voter Registration Week, sponsored by Secretary
of State Bill Jones, and MTV’s Rock the Vote try to stop the
decline in youth voting through encouragement and education.
‘A lot of young people think that voting isn’t important, that
it doesn’t affect their lives,’ said Jaime Uzeta, field coordinator
for Rock the Vote.
‘They don’t see the connection between voting and the issues
that they care about, and that’s our challenge.’
Polls collected by the Field Institute during the 1988
presidential election showed that 20 percent of California’s voters
were between 18 and 29. In 1992, that group made up 19 percent of
voters, and in 1996, they made up only 17 percent.
Declining voter participation is not new to America, and not
limited to youth.
‘It is a trend that seems associated with lack of confidence and
trust in government in general,’ said William M. Mason, professor
of sociology.
There are many different speculations that attempt to explain
the trend, some of which are historical, he said.
‘Some things that people have pointed to is the deception that
was involved in the Vietnam War,’ Mason said.
‘At the same time, the Civil Rights Movement was also gaining
steam. It split the population and the losing end took the defeat
seriously.’
Mason said that whenever there is a strong division in the
population, where there are two or more conflicting sides, students
will be more active.
The Clinton controversy will not contribute to the declining
voter participation unless it is pushed farther, he predicted.
‘It doesn’t really have the ring of real crime yet, but if it is
pushed, it might produce another major political crisis. Then we’ll
see some activism,’ Mason said.
‘Periods of activism come and go. There is not a natural level
of student involvement,’ he said.
Egal Shabatz, a third-year sociology student, said that current
political issues have not resulted in any extreme political
activism.
‘Policy issues aren’t directed toward students. Many students
don’t realize the future impacts of decisions made now, so they
don’t participate,’ Shabatz said.
Many students complain that their votes cannot possibly make a
difference and use that as an excuse not to vote.
Hogan, however, offered an analogy which she said shows the
power of one vote.
‘When you get on a freeway and one person stalls, it could block
traffic for hour,’ she said.
The most obvious reasons that people do not vote, though, are
because they feel they are too busy, are inconvenienced by the
methods of registration and voting procedures, or simply do not
understand how.
Measures such as the ‘Motor-Voter Act,’ which allows citizens to
register to vote when they apply for their driver’s license,
respond to these complaints and are aimed at making voting easier
 but Hogan and others still feel that more needs to be
done.
‘With the youth in general, they don’t know that they have to
register thirty days in advance, or about absentee ballots.
‘The process needs to be simplified or at least explained,’
Hogan said. ‘They need to present the material so it doesn’t look
impossible. Tiny things the administration could do would make a
big difference.’
Mason said that America needs to make voting easier by keeping
the polls opened longer and on holidays or Sundays.
‘We need to change ways in which campaigns are run, but change
in political culture is not easy to bring about,’ he said.
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