Year after year, young individuals around the age of 18-29 are breaking record youth turnout rates. In the past years, the youth turnout rate has grown by 1-6% stated by CIRCLE (Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement) As the 2024 elections are occurring many seniors will become eligible to vote. What are their opinions about being able to vote and are they going to take advantage of the matter?
To find out, we interviewed two seniors who attend East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy who are going to be or already are eligible to vote. The purpose is to see their opinions and actions for the 2024 Election. The first student interview was a Senior named Hernan Sanchez. The second student we interviewed was another Senior, Kevin Lopez. We gave them five questions that summed up our opinions on voting.
The true purpose of interviewing students is to see first their opinions, second actions upon voting, and third to see if voting right out the gate is a good thing. Right out of the gate, we saw two students with completely different ideas. Hernan was confident and fully willing to vote for this upcoming election this was expressed with quotes such as “exciting to try new things, see how voting is, and the experiences” and “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind, I will try it out and probably do it with my brother but I think he has done it. Most likely will vote”
While Kevin completely shoots the idea of voting for the upcoming election. And his reason is far more realistic and far more thoughtful as he states “Honestly probably not, I feel I don’t know enough stuff about government. So I want to be informed and know about who I am going to be voting for and I don’t see me this voting year.”
This topic raised by Kevin shows a deepening truth that young or coming-of-age voters are most likely voting with no prior knowledge or context of what they may vote for. This issue itself causes major problems because if young people are voting and don’t fully understand what they are voting for, it will be an issue for everyone as these votes affect the whole nation. However, it is not over as Hernan stated “with my brother” meaning he has an older or more experienced person who can guide him. Even Kevin himself has a “mentor” which he states is “my family members are voting”.
With both these students having someone to guide them, it gets rid of the problem that young voters will vote blindly. Now, For our final interview, we got a staff member under the title of PSA Attend counselor named Mr. Hall. The purpose of his interview is that we wanted his opinion on coming-of-age voters. From what we got it seems like he enjoys that coming-of-age voters are going to be able to vote as stated “Seniors turn 18 by election day they will be able to vote and hope that every senior eligible to vote does so”. It seems he saw no issue and was pleased to know that coming-of-age voters would be able to vote. Overall voting at any age is excellent, All you need is just the knowledge and context on topics you may vote for.