According to an MTV poll(yeah, take it with a grain of salt), ONE QUARTER of 18-24 yr olds could not name one of the presidential candidates, and SEVENTY PERCENT could not name one of the vice-presidential candidates!
And these stupid fucking kids wonder why the candidates don’t speak to their issues!
I wish you had to pass some sort of general knowledge test before you could vote. At least know what you were voting for and who was in the fucking race! Morons. I hate being a part of this generation.
All these movements to get people out to the polls make me sick. Do you really want one of those oblivious fools in the voting booth? Getting people to vote just for the sake of a high turnout is a mistake. We should spend a little more time making sure the people voting have a clue as to what they are doing. The fewer people that vote the better- an uninformed populace with the vote is the most dangerous thing in the world.
Hey, just think of it this way… it’s that 25% that provides the possibility of success from dark horse candidates. It adds a new dimension to the electoral process…
“Candidate Felcher seems to be the most popular, but the Ignorant Sector could possibly sway the nomination to Candidate Squicker.”
It ain’t only dumbass kids, either. My grandmother voted a straight ticket all of her life, I believe. She once asked me why I didn’t vote a straight ticket. I told her if she could name her party’s candidate for a particular office, I would be GLAD to vote for that individual. Of course, she got in a snit & refused to speak to me the rest of the day.
I turned 18 in February, 1972 …the last year of the Viet Nam draft. After a long, hard fight, we (Eighteen-year-olds) had just recently won the right to vote. Our argument was that if we were old enough to fight and die for our country, we were old enough to decide which leaders we would fight and die for.
Those were the days of Kent State and SDS, I believed in a cause back then and I, as well as many others, fought hard to see it through. Rather than run away to Canada, I logged thousands of miles riding my thumb to attend rallys and fight what I thought was an unjust system. I had the pleasure of giving “Tricky Dick” the finger to his face, (not a real good idea unless you enjoy being escorted aside and questioned for three hours, but thats a whole different story in itself).
I really don’t think you have to worry much about the uninformed masses you mention, they’re probably not the type to get off their asses and vote anyway (I’m a good one to talk, I don’t participate in federal level elections anymore either… again, a different story).
I haven’t seen a poll and can’t back this up, but I’d be surprised if the over-18 segment of our population rated much higher in their political awareness.
The right of eighteen-year-olds to vote, like most of our rights, was hard won with a lot of sweat, sacrifice and tear gas, not to mention a few innocent lives. Please don’t be too quick to toss it away.
I keep saying, over and over, polls don’t mean spit. I mean, are they polling teens who are coming in for the ‘Tom Green’ show? ‘MTV’s beach party’? ‘Loveline’? 70% of that group wouldn’t be able to spell their own names. Can we say this is representative of the teen community at large?
Or did they just happen to ask them questions after they had smoked a bongload?
I turned 18 in 1992, not that terribly long ago. I was in college that fall, and my entire dorm floor got together to watch all of the debates, and then afterwards we’d debate the various issues amongst ourselves. Every one of us voted - most of us actually went to the polls in groups. However, I don’t believe a single one of us ever participated in an MTV poll. I can’t even imagine taking that network seriously as a news source, much less an accurate reflection of the opinions of 18-24 year old voters.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure of the accuracy of a poll done by the same network that brings you gems like “Jackass”. Sounds like an invented figure meant to freak people out to me. Just my gut reaction.
Where did they interview these 18-24 year olds? At a kegger? Joe’s 2nd annual Crack Fest?
Uh, maybe if these kids had any reason to feel that the difference between the Republocratic Party and the Demmican Party represented an actual choice, they’d be more interested in politics.
[dripping scarcasm]Thank you! Thanks for realizing that every single last one of us teenagers are the same! I never thought some one would realize that we aren’t (God forbid) diffrent![/dripping scarsam]
I am 18. I am going to vote. I also see where those teenagers who aren’t voting are coming from. They don’t care about us, why should we care about them? Faulty logic, yes, but I understand.
Hey, can you name ALL the canidates? No relavence, just wondering…
BTW… ONE QUARTER? One fucking QUARTER! Take a fucking pool of “adults” for the same question. See what happens.
And a fucking MTV poll? Please. Like that’s a ramdom sample. Not even close to accurate.
VaHermit, I think you are right. The majority of 18 yr olds who fought to earn the right to vote cared about it more (on average) than 18 yr olds of today (on average). I love that I got the right to vote at 18. But the majority of my friends and peers unfortunately couldn’t care less.
spooje, I know, polls aren’t the end all be all measurement of the people’s pulse, but isn’t it scary that the people questioned in this poll didn’t know? Even with the candidates making the rounds on Letterman and Leno?
matt, how can you say there isn’t a difference? The main difference is money- what are they going to do with mine? And if the youth truly feels that the Dems or Reps don’t differ, that doesn’t mean they can’t vote Libertarian or Green or Reform! Those aren’t wasted votes! They send a message, especially if exit polls show the high 3rd party votes are youth votes.
relic (my favorite), I am so glad you understood my post! All you damned whipper-snappers are ruining everything! The point wasn’t for you to react in a “knee-jerk” fashion. The point is that it’s scary that MTV could find ANY people who couldn’t even name one candidate. Yeah, I know teen-agers are different. Thanks for the heads up.
Politicians don’t care about the 18-24s because the 18-24s don’t vote. Do you know the turnout numbers for that age group? The seniors live to vote. Even if it is a straight ticket (yuck activgurl!), they go to the polls in massive numbers! If the youth got motivated and our turnout numbers shot through the roof, you would hear the candidates speaking to us. Even after 1992, with Bill Clinton courting the youth vote, the numbers weren’t markedly higher, so sure, politicians figured they had limited time and money, why waste it on people who won’t vote?
And yeah, I can name all the candidates.
wring, I agree with you. An uniformed populace with the vote is the most dangerous thing in the world.
I would just like to know why people are so quick to dismiss MTV as a viable polling agency. I don’t think a network that relies almost entirely upon revenue from the age group in question is going to be so anxious to portray them as bumbling idiots, do you?
And Valerieblaise, no one on your “entire dorm floor” was polled? How odd to think that out of a pool of veritable millions, that the 40 some people on your floor didn’t get a single representative…
I’m 19, and I’m not exactly looking forward to the election (I had briefly considered deliberately throwing my vote away, then decided that’d be an anal thing to do). I only regret not being able to start my participation in the electoral process by deciding 'tween more dynamic candidates (we need Jess Ventura to run… at least he’d be fun :D)
Yes, the aforementioned kids don’t deserve to vote.
Neither do d+++++s adults deserve to vote.
Thing is, who decides who is a d+++++s, and who is intelligent enough to be allowed to vote?
Turns out, whoever disagrees with a person is too much of a d+++++s to vote. I think that this is why we are all allowed one vote, so that those of us who think they know best (which is all of us, of course) have only one vote, and the rest of the populace have one vote to express their opinion also.
Intelligence and common sense have very little to do with age, IMHO.
Upon graduating high school (NOT turning 18), each person takes a standardized IQ test. The person then gets one vote per point of his/her general IQ score, plus one point per year that person has lived. One gets a 50% bonus to his/her votes for having at least one post-secondary degree (100% if it’s a political science degree). Sure, tallying votes would be more of a hassle, but one vote per person is kinda silly. Why should an MTV dumbass have the same amount of voting power as a middle-aged small business owner (who is affect more drastically by who is in power) who follows the issues? Yeah, I know this system wouldn’t work, but it’s mine, so I like it.
Seriously, though, I do think that people should have to pass a test to register to vote. After that, they should keep informed about what going on in politics. It’s not hard.
Well, I just turned 18, and I never got around to registering. But it’s ok. You know why? Because my mother knows jack-shit about politics. While I was watching the Debates, she walked into the room, looked right at Gore and Dubya and said “Who are they?” So, I’m filling out her sample ballot, and she’s going to vote off of it. My dad likes Dubya, (The one point we differ on), but other than that he is so oblivious, that I’m going to fill out his sample ballot too. (For the issues other than Indecision 2000)
So, go ahead and continue to say that all teens are stupid. But in this house, it’s the adults who don’t have a clue, and the teen who gets to have her voice heard twice. (Too bad I never registered, then it would have been thrice. Oh well.)
Uh, didn’t the Supreme Court deem that sort of testing, (as well as the “poll-tax”) unconstitutional?