Alexis's HMP Blog 2013-2014: December 2013

On your blog, choose 2 of the following topics to reflection on regarding your mentorship and the inner- office/personal dynamics that you have discovered while participating in the program thus far.

Social Conscience: How well do you believe your site is demonstrating a strong commitment to improve the world (i.e., environment, community, education, youth, etc.)? Explain.

The company I intern with, the Hall County Government, I believe has only good intent of improving the community of Hall County, in every way. Being on the inside of the government has really opened my eyes to all that they do to try and help everyone as a whole. Thanks to the HC Government, we have major revenue-creating industries, organizations, tourist attractions, environment-caring companies, and even multiple higher education facilities. We have Lake Lanier that provides water and tourism to the area, Gainesville as the poultry capital of the world, multiple compactor and recycling centers, Elachee Nature Center to teach people about how inportant the environment is, over 7 high schools and 3 universities and colleges to educate tomorrows workers and leaders, and much more. Our county government is focused on what it should be, making Hall County a better place to live.

Building your Network: How have you or others in this organization effectively utilized relationship building/networking? In what ways can you build a strong network with those you work with for future benefit?

I have absolutely built relationships and connections that I will keep for years to come. It is important to have connections in powerful places, and i have chosen a very powerful place to have one, in the Hall County Administration, where I work alongside the Hall County Board of Commissioners and other high officials. I can use these connections to my benefit when applying to college and future internships, where I can use the connections I have made for references, letters of recommendation, and other things I may need to move onto the next level in my career path.

1. What does the right to vote mean to you? How important do you think the right to vote is to you and your classmates? What evidence supports your answer?

The right to vote is a privilege that most young eligible do not take advantage of. It is the simplest way to take part in the government as a citizen of the US. I had the honor and privilege of being able to work in the Hall County Government Elections Office, assisting in the city mayoral elections, while doing my mentorship, and I am proud to say that I did. In my experience there, i realized from the inflow of elderly people making an effort to vote in such a small election, that the right to vote does not mean as much to my generation as it did to, for example, my grandmother, who could not vote at an early age but wanted to. Statistically, the age range from 18-29 has the least ratio percentage of eligible voters who actually vote. It is very disappointing that my age range has the largest pool of eligible voters, yet we do not take advantage of that. However, it would be worse if people voted blindly just to say they voted.

2. Read The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, including the annotations. Then answer the questions that follow to understand the amendment in its historical context.

1. What was going on in 1971 that led young people to pressure the government to grant voting rights to 18-year-olds?

18+ year olds were granted the vote in response to Vietnam War protests that argued that soldiers who are old enough to fight for their country should be old enough to vote.

2. The process of granting voting rights to 18-year-olds involved a complex series of events. Explain what role the legislative and judicial branches played, and the states. Also, explain why a constitutional amendment was proposed and ratified.

Legislative: On March 10, 1971, the Senate voted 94–0 in favor of proposing a Constitutional amendment to lower the voting age to 18. On March 23, 1971, the House of Representatives voted 401–19 in favor of the proposed amendment. Within four months after the Congress submitted it to the states, the amendment was ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures, the shortest time in which any proposed amendment has received the number of ratifications needed for adoption.

Judicial: On June 22, 1970, President Richard Nixon signed an extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that required the voting age to be 18 in all federal, state, and local elections. Oregon and Texas challenged the law in court. In Oregon v. Mitchell, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the parts of the law that required states to register 18-year-olds for state and local elections.

States: As stated in the "Judicial" section, Oregon and Texas challenged challenged Nixon's extension to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, in Oregon v. Mitchell which was later repealed by the 26th Amendment. When it came time to ratifying the bill in 1971, all states eventually ratified it except for Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah.

Amendment: Congress and the state legislatures felt pressured to pass the Constitutional amendment because of the Vietnam War. People felt that if you were old enough to fight, you were old enough to vote.

3. How do you think young people having the right to vote has affected elections since 1971?
I think that young people have not taken advantage of their right to vote since the Amendment passed in 1971, and therefore have not affected the outcome of many elections at all up to date.

3. Young voters—many voting for the first time—had a big impact on the outcome of the 2008 presidential election. Watch Impact of Youth Vote, which aired on NBC on Nov. 5, 2008, the day after Barack Obama was elected president. Work with the person next to you to list the three most significant things you learned from the video. (If necessary, you can watch it again or read the transcript.) Share your pair’s list with another pair, and change your list if you need to. Think about the question you answered regarding the 26th Amendment, about the possible impact that the youth vote might have. Was your hypothesis correct?

My hypothesis, that young voters have not affected the election outcomes, was proven wrong with this video. However, it does state that in most previous elections, the youth vote has been very low. The three most significant things I found in the video were 1. the youth vote played a pivotal role in the outcome of the 2008 election, and perhaps even make the difference between a loss and a win for Obama. 2. The youth vote supported Obama 2 to 1 in the exit polls, showing how much the young generation supported Obama and cared about the election. 3. Obama's heavy campaigning through social media played a crucial role in getting young voters to the polls.

4. The NBC report concludes with news correspondent Luke Russert predicting that the youth vote will continue to make a difference in future elections. In November 2011, the Pew Research Center released a report that suggests he may have been right. With a small group, work through the following steps studying the data from the Pew report.
a. One of the biggest changes across generations has to do with the ethnic makeup of the population. Look at Nation’s Race & Ethnicity in 2011 and follow the directions on that handout.

The data shows that since 1900, the ethnic percentage of voters has become more diverse. The white percentage is going down while most of the others are going up. I think the change will effect the outcomes of the elections. Historically, race can somewhat predict political views by way of social class. White males tend to have different political views than, per say, a Hispanic male (gender plays a role too but I guess we can leave that out), and the more the race and party with the opposing view grows, the more power they will have in influencing election outcomes.

b. Look at Young-Old Voting Gap Largest Since Nixon v. McGovern in 1972 and follow the directions on that handout.

The horizontal axis shows the candidates running for office that year. The vertical axis shows the percentage of people voting for the democratic presidential candidate. The blue line shows voters aged 18-29. The yellow line shows voters aged 65+. 2008 had the largest gap between young and elderly voters. The gap was largest then because candidates have had more access, through the internet, to younger voters, who tend to be poorer and to vote more democratic. The graph predicts that Obama and Romney will be running in the 2012 election. The young-old gap is projected to be slightly smaller than the 2008 election. The graph shows a general increasing trend of voting more democratic in recent elections in both young and old voters. Young voters have a larger percentage of people voting democratic. If the projection is accurate, then the youth vote will have a great influence on the 2012 election, just like it did on the 2008 election. It would pull the majority vote as being more democratic.