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Comment by jmclnx | Hacker News Reader

He is right, but the young can change things. The sad fact is they do not vote, and if they vote at all it is only in presidential. Even in those elections well less then 50% vote.

They are a big voting block, if they all start voting, including in local elections, in about 10 years you will see change. But seems people these days want instant change.

2024 will be a big tell for the young, depending on who wins, things could get far worse for them.

Right now, the corporations determine who runs the US, the young, if that have patience, can change things by voting in all elections.

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They can. The media will do everything in their power to distract people and prevent them from identifying the things truly causing their problems. As long as people think the main problems in America are immigrants or trans people or racists, they won’t look at who is picking their pockets.

(This isn’t even to say there aren’t real problems. But they have enormously outsized influence.)

Any politician who correctly identifies these issues will be labeled as fringe. So likely the only solution will be local politics.

> the young can change things

It depends on who you’re calling young and which country you’re talking about. Millennials in the US will be the largest eligible voting block for the next 30 years at least, and maybe longer if they don’t have kids at a greater rate. Gen Z [edit: typo] is the smallest generation as a percentage of the total in US history so they’ll be out voted by older voters for the rest of their lives. In most other western/developed countries even the millennials are hopelessly outnumbered by older voters.

I thought Millennials and Gen Y were the same? Did you mean to say Gen Z?

Yes I did, edited, thank you.

Screw voting, they need to run for office. I am Gen X and one of the things that bug me is that we (GenX) haven't had a President from our cohort. Bill Clinton right now is younger than both candidates and he was first president 32 years ago... Our generation has been missing from politics and it may be too late for us: Millennials should step up and run for office.

doesn't this assume they all vote as single block? if their vote is diverse then it won't make much difference

No. Political parties change their behavior to capture voting demographics. Right now politicians aren't motivated to win the young vote because we vote less.

Great point

Is there actual evidence of this occurring or is it just a hypothesis? I can’t recall offhand significant policy changes to capture voting demographics.

Maybe because voting demographics change so slowly, policy changes slowly too. Thirty years ago, when I was still in K-12 school, Baby Boomers were the largest generational voting bloc in the USA, and they still are. With a few exceptions that the rest of us are grateful for, it's been politically status-quo for pretty much my entire life.

Right, but I think you are making my point. Despite the boomers dominating for decades, we’ve seen the GOP swing far right relative to the 70s/80s. For example, Nixon massively expanded the Clean Air Act and enacted the Clean Water Act, which never would never have happened with the GOP in the last 30 years.

Younger voters tend to blue.

Approximately half (53%) of young Americans indicate they will "definitely be voting" in the 2024 general election for president. Young Americans' interest in voting in 2024 is now on par with Harvard Youth Poll data from 2020, which indicated that 54% would likely vote.

If the presidential election were held today, President Biden would outperform former President Trump among both registered (50% Biden, 37% Trump) and likely young voters under 30 (56% Biden, 37% Trump). When there is no voter screen (i.e., all young adults 18-29), the race narrows to single digits, 45% for President Biden, 37% for former President Trump, with 16 percent undecided.

Among the 1,051 "likely voters" in our sample, we found significant differences in support levels based on gender, age, race/ethnicity, and education levels, among other subgroups. For example, among likely young voters:

    President Biden's lead among young men is six points; among young women his lead is 33 points;
    President Biden's lead among 18-24 year-olds is 14 points, and among 25-29 year-olds it is 26 points;
    President Biden's lead among white voters is 3 points; among non-white voters his lead is 43 points;
    President Biden's lead among college students is 23 points; he leads by 47 points among college graduates. The race is even among those not in college and without a four-year degree.

https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/47th-edition-spring-2024

Those numbers show that while the half of young people who are likely voters favor democrats, the other half of young people who don’t plan to vote must be split evenly between Biden and Trump. (For the overall average to be 45% Biden, the half that doesn’t plan to vote must be under 40% Biden to 37% Trump, with a large share probably supporting RFK Jr.)

That seems to support OP’s point. If you got that other half of young people to vote, they’d have very little effect on the election because they’re evenly split. Neither party has any reason to try and turn out those young voters.

What happens when neither candidate is your ideal candidate? In my country, it has been decades that people have had to choose between bad and worse. All handpicked by the "system" and not a single one being an ideal candidate for the "people".

this is one of my pet peeves about our so called democratic systems. how can we have a democracy if we can't choose who gets to be a candidate?

I live I the US (so I'll speak to that situation), where it certainly is difficult to influence who is on the ballot for the major parties, but we do pretty much have open ballot access, where anyone that follows the process can stand for an election, and write in votes are at least very widely accepted.

the likelihood of a write-in candidate are small. i could not find any actual statistics but this article which points out that write-in candidates do win occasionaly:

http://www.virginiaplaces.org/government/writein.html

but the article also shows that some write-in wins are based on a technicality, like when there are more seats than nominated candidates.

in other words, this is not a level playing field. write-in candidates are not on equal footing with candidates nominated by established parties. even alternative parties usually have little chance.

in a truly democratic system write-in candidates would have an equal chance to get elected compared to those nominated by major parties. i don't know what the solution here is. in the current systems, those with more funds can do more campaigning. so do we need to eliminate campaigning entirely?

Why would the chances be equal? If we ban campaigning, should we also make it illegal to be gregarious and likeable?

My point is more that you are bemoaning your lack of influence and power, not pointing out some glaring unfairness in the system

likeability and eg integrity of character are much better indicators of a good candidate than the amount of money they can spend to get their name promoted.

equal chance refers to the awareness and knowledge about each candidate among the voting population. that can be achieved by promoting all candidates equally.

for other qualities, we need to get a better understanding what makes good candidates, and educate voters to choose candidates based on that.

Vote when all the choices are oldies? Senate is the oldest it’s ever been. Many over retirement age.

We’ll be voting on two ~80 year olds as presidents who both can’t run a 100m sprint.

There are less young every year.

> The sad fact is they do not vote,

Vote for who? Like, legitimately, who?

> 2024 will be a big tell for the young, depending on who wins, things could get far worse for them.

Will it though? The current state is decades of shitty politics from both sides of the aisle leading us here.

> the young, if that have patience, can change things by voting in all elections.

Every major, positive, change in the US has come from direct action in the form of withholding labor, violent (yes, violent) protests, and other forms of action that would get you put on a list.

We are living in a society where the President is saying we're a free country while in the backdrop, people are being arrested for protesting our involvement in a war.

Voting has never, and will never, solve anything. There are examples of this over, and over again. Neither party represents the views of the majority of Americans, are extremely susceptible to bribery, and have generally no reason to care about what the average voter wants.

Beyond that, corporations also control the majority of media we consume. To the point that when there is a corporation that's not immediately acting in the self interest of the US government, we lobby to ban that (TikTok).

How exactly is voting between D and R going to actually change anything for the future generation?

Well, it may preserve democracy for another round. It’s not glamorous but the alternative is horrible.

Every individual with a Dollar in his/her pocket votes at every transaction. This may have more influence on powerful corpororations compared to voting for a party you have even less of a relationship with or stake in.

It's a difference of kind, not degree. A dollar is a vote within a marketplace; a vote determines the shape of the marketplace itself. The idea that the market can solve all things is core to neo-liberal capitalism, but has been widely discredited. In fact, Scott Galloway's excellent talk can be seen as the direct result of neo-liberal policies since the 90's.

That's why we should not try to solve problems using it, but power and influence it has; perhaps even more than only going to vote. Point in case: Democracy does not end at the vote boot, it's not even remotely where it begins. Policy and politicians don't spawn from a vacuum, and we are all part of their environment; some choose to be part of their environment more than others ~ by various means. This helps shape the society everyone shares.

But if you don't have very many dollars in your pocket, you don't have very much say.

Votes and Money are overrated. It's possible to change legislation without being in office and on a 0 budget. I don't have the t-shirt, but i've been there and have done it. Everyone can. The focus on votes and money makes people feel more powerless than they really are, this in turn, harms democracy ~ actually is at the expense of civil/individual power&influence.

People with lots of money vote. So even if money is more powerful, dollars are a supplement for voting, not a replacement. If you don't have enough money to lobby an elected official, that makes voting that much more important.

> they all start voting, including in local elections, in about 10 years you will see change.

Who would they vote for according to you to see this change in 10 years?

Both parties have been taking turn governing and yet, here we are. A cynic would point out that we've seen empirically that voting doesn't change anything.

"If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting.

In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote."

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, Up, Simba!

There is no voting solution to this.

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