{"id":14575,"date":"2014-11-24T14:12:57","date_gmt":"2014-11-24T19:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=14575"},"modified":"2014-11-24T14:12:57","modified_gmt":"2014-11-24T19:12:57","slug":"younger-americans-think-lack-knowledge-vote-responsibly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=14575","title":{"rendered":"do younger Americans think they lack the knowledge to vote responsibly?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2014\/11\/21\/young-voters_n_6200852.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-14580 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/images\/voting_duty.png\" alt=\"voting_duty\" width=\"591\" height=\"407\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/images\/voting_duty.png 591w, https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/images\/voting_duty-300x206.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 591px) 100vw, 591px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>According to a HuffPost\/YouGov survey <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2014\/11\/21\/young-voters_n_6200852.html\">reported<\/a> by\u00a0<span class=\"name fn\">Ariel Edwards-Levy, younger Americans\u00a0are the\u00a0most likely to believe\u00a0that you should only vote if you are well-informed. According to the\u00a0same poll, younger Americans\u00a0guess that a majority of their fellow citizens\u00a0vote in midterm years. They overestimate national turnout far\u00a0more than older people do.\u00a0Yet\u00a0many of these younger respondents do not vote themselves. (We <a href=\"http:\/\/www.civicyouth.org\/21-3-youth-turnout-preliminary-estimate-comparable-to-recent-midterm-years\/\">know<\/a>\u00a0that actual youth turnout is only about 20-25% in midterm elections). They must see themselves as outliers&#8211;in a bad way. They are\u00a0<\/span>critical of their own political knowledge and believe that other people know more than they do.<\/p>\n<p>The ones who do vote are quite well informed. According to the exit polls, 77% of 18-29s who voted\u00a0this November\u00a0claimed to have followed the midterm election at least &#8220;somewhat closely.&#8221; But many others may have told\u00a0themselves that they don&#8217;t know enough to vote. As I said to\u00a0Edwards-Levy, &#8220;If anything, they might be putting themselves through too stringent a test.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Of course, you <em>should<\/em> inform yourself before you vote. But I don&#8217;t think our main problem is uninformed people casting ballots; it&#8217;s people staying home because they\u00a0are\u00a0actually\u00a0uninformed or think they are. It is hard to\u00a0collect political information all on your own just so that you can vote. The traditional solution is to enroll people in multi-purpose organizations that are also conduits for political information. But those organizations are shrinking.\u00a0As I said in the article, &#8220;Twenty or thirty years ago, there were devices for getting information to working-class young people like labor unions, which they belonged to still, and also churches.\u00a0&#8230;\u00a0Those things have really weakened, so they&#8217;re kind of on their own. If you&#8217;re a high school dropout and you&#8217;re working at Walmart, there&#8217;s no way for you to get information except for you to actively seek it.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to a HuffPost\/YouGov survey reported by\u00a0Ariel Edwards-Levy, younger Americans\u00a0are the\u00a0most likely to believe\u00a0that you should only vote if you are well-informed. According to the\u00a0same poll, younger Americans\u00a0guess that a majority of their fellow citizens\u00a0vote in midterm years. They overestimate national turnout far\u00a0more than older people do.\u00a0Yet\u00a0many of these younger respondents do not vote themselves. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2014-election"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14575"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14583,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14575\/revisions\/14583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}