How Do We Get People To Vote?

And now, I present to you, a case of society failing to engage its citizens civically.

As most of us know, last Tuesday was Election Day. This was a very important election for the state of Pennsylvania, where a gubernatorial race occurred that saw the incumbent governor, Tom Corbett, deposed by newcomer Tom Wolf. This Battle of the Toms was not the only important political event that happened on Tuesday, though. The GOP took control over the U.S. Senate, and kept its hold over the House of Representatives. This is sure to change the way that the remaining two years of President Obama's final term play out.

With momentous occasions such as these occurring, you would expect many people to get out and vote to support their favored party or candidate. Sadly, you would be wrong. In fact, the voter turnout last Tuesday was the lowest it has been since WWII. While the linked article makes the argument that this may be due to recent voting restrictions passed in certain states (which I could write an entirely new article about), most of the lack of turnout can safely be attributed to political apathy. Apathy, especially with young people, is strong--even moreso during midterm elections such as this year's. Not only do younger people vote less than older age brackets, they also tend to not care about politics in general. I know that I experienced a lot of political apathy on Election Day. I heard people complaining about any sort of political talk happening at all.

This apathy is obviously a problem; how can our population be accurately represented if not even half of us go out and vote in early November? This is a problem that many campaigns try--and fail--to solve every year. Obviously, there needs to be some rhetorical change made in our strategies. Maybe teachers can help kids register to vote in their high school government classes? How about adding direct incentives? If you guys have any thoughts, let me know in the comments.

The Danger Of A Single Story: My Response

Here is a link to the video if you haven't watched it yet:



In this talk, Adichie talks about how most people seem to fit those of other demographic groups into a single, one-size-fits-all mold. She used very good examples about her experience at an American university, where Adichie herself broke this mold many times over. Many of the students--and even professors--had only one image of an African person that they would accept: poor, uneducated, probably starving, and so on. Adichie was very intelligent, in good health, and, for all intents and purposes, very "un-African". One example of this simple story that Americans are subscribed to is when her professor critiqued a novel of hers set in Africa for the characters not being "African" enough. In his mind, they should have all been impoverished and hungry; in her book, Adichie made the characters relatively middle class, driving cars and conducting business.

When she referenced this single story, I realized that--while I would like to think that it is not to the extent of most Americans--I am subscribed to this same story as well. I like to consider myself open-minded, but I still often find myself passing judgement on someone just because of some social group that they fall into. This is especially apparent when I think about entire countries. It is hard as an outsider to not think of them as a singular entity. I often forget to wrap my head around the fact that, no, they aren't just "Canadians", but 35 million living and breathing individuals--each with their own thoughts, ideas, emotions and values. I feel like the reason we blanket large groups under one single story is because being completely open-minded is HARD. Stereotyping people is easy, and you can skip the huge step of actually analyzing a person by subscribing to a single story that represents everyone in their group.

From now on, I will make sure to remember that no matter how much truth there is to a stereotype or story, there will always be little quirks and outliers that I need to take into account. Not every McDonald's employee is unskilled or unintelligent. Not every Brazilian is a crazy party-animal. Not every computer programmer is a socially-incapable geek. Not every story is the sole story you should believe.