Republicans are at war with young people in general. It honestly looks like they are actively TRYING to lose as much of the youth vote as possible:

Young people deeply feel the existential dread of climate change. Republicans still deny the basic facts about it, and fight all attempts to mitigate it.

Young people understand that their lives have been destroyed by student loans at rates and amounts unheard of in the past. Republicans not only have ZERO empathy, here, they are actually delighting in cruelty about it. They actively tried to add RETROACTIVE interest charges to student loans as we reach the end of the pandemic loan freeze, on top of their efforts to make it virtually impossible to have loans forgiven for public service.

Young people are less religious than ever, while the right wing is using the court to turn us into a theocracy.

Young people have progressive attitudes about LGBTQ rights, and the Republicans are centering their 2024 campaign on a contest of the bigoted they can be in this area.

While I agree with all this, the issue is that young people in general are also some of the least likely to go vote. Who cares if you lose the support of a block who isn’t going to vote anyways.

We’re seeing a slow rise in voter participation but even in one of our most active elections ever (midterms 2022 had a whopping 52% participation!), <35% of eligible youth (18-29) actually voted compared to ~58% of 45-64 and ~68% of 65+.

It’s really sad to think about where we could be if just 50% of the youth range had voted in 2020 and 2022, might have had Dems in control of both the house and senate.

Source: brookings.edu/…/new-voter-turnout-data-from-2022-…

Young people have jobs

Old people are retired.

Voting is on a Tuesday.

One of the underlying reasons for turnout is pretty simple.

In quite a few states, including mine, we have a pamphlet sent out with all of the people you’re voting for, a picture of them, and their statement of what they’re going to do. You can vote any time and drop it off or mail it in by a certain date to be sure it gets there. You get a tab that has a bar code on it to check if it got there. Every state should have this, this should be federally mandated.

Yes - Vote by Mail is an absolute win for democracy. It’s no secret why the GOP rabidly opposes it.

That said: It’s also difficult to demand at a federal level.

The US Constitution delegates running of elections to the States, though it does allow Congress to claw back that delegation “by appropriate legislation.” You saw some of that regulation in various things like the Voting Rights Act. Congress, if it had the political will, could pass laws to declare how elections are run in all 50 states.

It would be a hard-fought battle, though, and eventually end up in the Supreme Court, which, these days, would laugh, rule 6-3 against it, and say, “Whatta gonna do 'bout it?”

The realistic solution is the long-term one. Everyone needs to vote, not once every 4 years, but in every election, and especially local elections. City, County, and State elections matter more. These are the races that govern your day-to-day lives. Stop electing Republicans to local offices and start electing people who respect our form of government and have, at least, a modicum of honesty, or enough shame to keep their corruption under wraps were we don’t have to know about it.