Wednesday, February 10, 2016

An Open Letter To Millennials

I'm writing this not as a voter who supports any particular candidate, but as an election worker.

This morning I read an article about why millennial women won't vote for Hillary Clinton. I'm not going into the why of it. For this blog, it doesn't matter.

In 2008, the vast majority of millennials chose Barack Obama as their candidate, and with their help, he was able to win the White House. They did it because they wanted change. I assume they support Senator Sanders for the same reason.

The thing is, between 2009-2011, the vast majority of millennials didn't vote. Enough came back in 2012 to get Obama re-elected, but then they disappeared again.

This past November, less than twenty millennials showed up on Election Day to vote in my district. That's out of over nine hundred voter names in the book.

We know millennials didn't show up across the country in 2010. If they had, the House wouldn't have been completely taken over by the GOP, ensuring that no change, and not much of anything else, would take place for most of Obama's presidency.

So that's why it doesn't matter who you support for President, or your reasons for doing so. Even if your candidate makes it to the White House, there's no guarantee that your choice will be able to change anything. You need to also change Congress. And you need to change those judges who'll eventually be eligible for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Change doesn't happen in our democracy with the election of one person, no matter what the office. If you want change, you need to vote EVERY year.

muon