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way of life. When I asked why, I usually got the same response. Nothing changes. They felt like even if they did vote, it was just one vote. What could that do?

When I raised the topic at work, I received vastly different reactions than I had from people my own age. The people I worked with were mostly in their forties and fifties. While they maintained a basic understanding of the issues at hand, most of them had the same logic for their voting tendencies. They were Democrats, or they were Republicans. The enthusiasm I saw in the informal discussion groups I had been a part of was replaced with an over all feeling of mundane routine. As with my peers however, this was not true for everyone I encountered. The varying degrees of political awareness could be seen in my own home. While my mother was a perennial Democratic ticket box-checker, my father studied the issues as much as he could. He claimed to be a Republican, but relied more on the actual issues than the party affiliation.

Voter apathy, in all its forms, knows no age. Flaws in the American political process come about because people vote for the wrong reasons, not because they don't vote at all. If a person has the right to vote, they also have the right not to. By exercising this right, and leaving the decisions to those who are more informed, they are doing a much greater good than casting a blind vote. Taking this right away from intelligent, passionate eighteen-year-olds would simply be removing a good portion of the voting public that is pure and devout in its intent.

Learn more about this author, Jack Myles.
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