Finish Your Vote

I never really thought of myself as “American” until I went abroad. I mean, sure, I am a citizen of the United States of America, but until recently I was reluctant to identify myself too closely with Uncle Sam. During the first part of my study-abroad experience, when I spoke of America, it was often with embarrassment: embarrassment about our cheesy pop music, our high pollution rates, and our Republican president.

But then, part-way through my summer abroad in Beijing, I found myself expounding upon “unalienable rights” to one of my Chinese teachers. I remember being surprised at having to explain to her what seemed to me to be such a basic concept—and I realized in a flash that the Declaration of Independence spoke for me. I do in fact personally hold the truths that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to be, well, self-evident. “Holy smokes!”, I remember thinking. “I’m patriotic!”

As my time out-of-country extended and I traveled to France, Spain, and Morocco, I realized just how extraordinary the United States of America is. Freedom House, an NGO that analyzes countries’ comparative levels of freedom globally, correctly describes the USA as “free”—as a country in which citizens enjoy many political rights and civil liberties. We elect our own government. We have freedom of assembly, press, and speech. (We even, for the most part, have working toilets!)

While some foreign countries’ citizens enjoy a level of freedom similar to that in the United States, many are not so well-off. France and Spain are also, according to Freedom House, “free” countries, but Morocco is only “partly free” and China is “not free.” In Morocco, I learned that bars and coffee shops were “for men only” and that, as a woman, it was safer never to walk into one. I met Taiwanese women in Beijing who could only speak of the China-Taiwan conflict with Americans, and even then, guardedly.

Somewhere in southern Spain, however, a nagging worry caught up with me. Americans—particularly young Americans—have democratic freedoms but don’t use them. According to the web site IDEA (the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance), in the 26 national elections since 1945, the average voter turnout rate for citizens age 18 to 24 has been only 48.3 percent. This is well below France (67.3 percent), Spain (77 percent), and even Morocco (57.6 percent). (China hasn’t had comparable elections.) Americans in this age group, aptly dubbed “Generation Quiet” by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, vote less than any other age group in the States. According to the web site civicyouth.org, in the 2006 midterm elections, while 52 percent of the adults 30 and over voted, only 22 percent of voters age 18 to 29 did. Now that’s something to be embarrassed about.

It’s not that young Americans don’t take interest in current issues or hold opinions; on the contrary, according to the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, youth tend to be both less satisfied with the status quo and more optimistic about the future than adults. When we do vote, we tend to value individual freedoms over institutional stability (think, for example, of the debate over music censorship). Yet when it comes to political participation, whether it’s at the polls or through protests, we are shockingly passive. Gone is the daring sense of activism that characterized our parents’ generation. Even in the Presidential election of 2004, when the youth vote surged to its highest rate ever—47 percent—the rate still lagged well behind that of all other age groups. 2003’s 200,000 person-strong march against the War in Iraq doesn’t compare to the half-a-million-person 1969 and 1971 demonstrations against Vietnam . Marches on Washington Mall, it seems, have been replaced by Facebook groups and lunch counter sit-ins by Product [Red] T-shirts.

Now, as we begin primary season and start thinking about the 2008 presidential election, is the time to remember that we must take advantage of the political and civil liberties that we do enjoy. We further must decide how we want our generation to be remembered: as passive and nonparticipatory, or as passionate and engaged? Whether we individually choose to vote for Obama, Huckabee, Clinton, Romney, or “Other,” in order to prove young adults a powerful national force, we must vote. Admittedly, for Harvard students this may be less of an issue than for others (there is a positive correlation between level of education and voter turnout) but still—call home. Talk to your friends. Help them to register.

When it comes down to it, Steven Colbert is right: I am America (And so can you!). Partisan politics aside, we citizens of the USA do commonly value freedom and democracy. I look to 2008 and hope that our next government is truly of the people, by the people and for the people—and that includes of, by, and for America’s youth. So go out, and cast your ballot—in the name of liberty, and for every disenfranchised young person in the world who would die for the opportunity to do so him or herself.

Justine R. Lescroart ’09 is an English and American literature and language concentrator in Quincy House, and spent the fall semester studying abroad in Granada, Spain. Her column appears regularly.