Why Young People Don't Vote (II)

Steve Smith argues that young people don't vote because they (a) there are few changes in government so youths aren't familiar with change, (b) polling indicting victory for one party makes polling seem useless, (c) young people have no sense of duty to vote, and (d) young politicians aren't cool.

Steve points out why (a) is unlikely. I would however ask Steve why polling would affect young voters more than older voters? We all see polling data; we all know who is going to win. Likewise, if our parents rebelled and didn't pass on a sense of duty to us, when did they get a sense of duty to vote?

I think Steve's final point does have some relevance: if voting isn't the cool thing to do, then it's something we do because we feel it has value. And for young people, what value do we get from voting?

As I argued previously, youths don't vote because we don't pay taxes, we don't use health care, etc—voting seems to be a pointless exercise since we don't care about any of the issues. What are we going to get out of it? Especially when politicians are all corrupt and will do the wrong thing anyway.

Youths don't vote because most of us see no value in it (I use "we" in the exclusive sense—I've voted every chance I have ever had).