Whether we’d like to admit it or not, Wayland is an affluent town with a bubble of protection from political issues. Some of us aren’t up to date with current legislation or who is running for president, and why should it matter? Most legislations don’t affect us so there’s no reason to care. Wrong!

The decisions made by politicians affect all of us, and unless our voices are heard, their decisions can bring harm to many. But for us, and so many other young people in small towns, it can seem impossible to make a real change in our community and world.

Some may think, what’s the big deal with young people not voting or being politically involved? Kids should just be kids right? What gets overlooked by this thinking is that, especially now with so many crises in our world, the younger generations should be looking at what is happening now with an eye toward how they will make changes as adults. The youth vote is a crucial voice in the presidential election and we’re here to tell you why.

For most members of the WHS community, the right to vote was granted to them the moment they became an adult in the eyes of the law: their 18th birthday. This wasn’t always the case though. Until the year 1971, it was illegal for anyone under the age of 21 to vote, restricting all high school students and the majority of college students from the ballots.

The 21-year old voting age had been challenged since the 1940s, when the first recorded requests for the age to be lowered to 18 were heard. While this complaint had a lot of support, it didn’t gain enough traction to get any amendments ratified.

The legal stance on this issue didn’t change much until the drafting age was released for the Vietnam War. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military draft was set to 18 years, which charged the voting age argument again, the main line of reason being the slogan, “old enough to fight, old enough to vote.”

In March, 1971, an amendment to have the voting age lowered to 18 was proposed, and on July 1, 1971, it was ratified as the 26th amendment. Since then, the right to vote is offered to all adults, allowing young, student voices to be heard in presidential elections.

This year, 40 million youth in the U.S. are eligible to vote in the election. To put it into perspective, this is about one-fifth of the United States population. This is not a small fraction we’re dealing with, meaning the youth voice has the opportunity to completely tip the way this election falls.

In the 2016 presidential election, less than half of youth voters from the ages 18-29 voted, contributing to a 15% decrease in voter turnout. If that entire demographic voted, the election could have swung in a completely different direction by far.

“If those younger people turned out, who knows how their vote would be split,” Wayland Select Board member Thomas Fay said. “They would have a significant impact.”

Still, not everyone decided to vote in the next election. In a recent TUFTS study on the 2020 election, researchers estimated that only a little over 50% of youth voted, which, while being a low number, was actually an 11 point increase from the 2016 election.

While this seems like a small percentage, judging by the fact that the ballots determine who will make decisions that direct the nation’s future, this percent has stayed relatively constant throughout the years, begging the question, why aren’t the youth voting?

This can be boiled down into a couple of main factors. For starters, voting can be built up like a habit, and according to a 2018 Forbes article, routines are the hardest to stick to when they’re new. In the case of some young voters, if their parents didn’t vote, they likely adopted that mindset and figured that voting is not something they need to think about.

“If [voting] is the tradition you take in as a youngster, and you observe that it’s something your parents value, you’re likely to develop that same habit,” Fay said.

Another factor is the physical inability for voters to get their ballots in, whether it’s because they can’t leave their job, don’t have the time, or don’t have the financial means to get to a voting box. This has changed drastically since the COVID-19 pandemic though, due to the ability to send in ballots remotely.

“Voting has never been more accessible since the pandemic,” Fay said. “It solidified early voting, and it solidified voting by mail, and I’m not sure how you can make it any easier.”

While these factors do play a role in the low number of young voters in the U.S., the most influential reason is the belief that the youth’s vote doesn’t matter.

“Young people underestimate how impactful their vote can be because they look at it as a sole vote,” Fay said. “If collectively, young people voted, and their numbers went up they would have a big impact on the election.”

The belief that youth voters don’t have a voice in the election is extremely detrimental to the diversity of the voting pool because of the insight the youth’s vote offers.

Each generation has issues that it’s most concerned with, which are more likely to stay the same as the generation ages. Youth voters break this cycle, because they bring in a new generation of potentially different issues and problems they want to be solved.

Following the trend over the last surviving generations, youth voters are typically the most accepting when it comes to race, culture and sexual orientation. This is an important voice to hear when striving for equality and a more accepting society.

“By speaking out, [youth voters] can be great examples and teachers for older people who may not be as sensitive to those who are different from them,” Fay said.

Unfortunately, we risk quieting this voice every year when we lose chunks of the youth vote. In a 2023 Pew Research study it was found that approximately 70% of the adult population voted in an election from 2018-2022, which greatly outweighs the youth vote of around 50%.

From a political standpoint, it would make the most sense for the president to support ideas that the majority of voters have, and because the older adult population has more votes, presidential candidates might not focus on the issues the youth are presenting as much.

“If you’re a politician, and you know that the young people aren’t going to vote, you’re not going to develop policies or ideas that recognize their opinion,” Fay said.

With all this evidence proving how impactful the youths vote is, one would think that politics is typically a prominent discussion the youth have. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and the lack of this communication has a toll on the number of educated voters sending in ballots each year.

In the last 20 years, discussing politics has become a bit of a taboo topic, at least in public. When we have nothing else to learn from, we turn to our parents, friends and social media to try to gain perspective. Many of these sources are usually supplying us heavily with bias or opinion, rather than fact. School plays a big role in political education as well. Many teachers feel passionate about teaching their students about politics and want to see young people understand the importance of them.

As students, we have a primary responsibility and expectation to learn and understand difficult topics throughout high school. Politics is a broad subject, but one that doesn’t seem to be analyzed or spoken about enough in Wayland. As the younger generation, we have an obligation to educate and prepare ourselves for the future of our community and our country. Soon enough, we will be the generation in control of running our government and nation, so if we don’t start thinking like it now, we will ultimately see the consequences of that.

We want to spread the message that, with some education, research and an effort to learn about without bias, anyone can be involved in politics. It is imperative that we start to understand what is happening politically and legislatively as we get closer to voting age.

When we are educated in the political state of the world, our vote becomes our voice and a representation of all the issues we want addressed. It’s easy to criticize and find problems in the candidates, but by not casting your vote, you throw away the crucial input you offer the future.

“If you want to fix a problem, you’ve got to commit yourself to doing it,” Fay said. “And one easy way to do it is to vote.”