There are reasons why young people don't vote 1. Electoral college: Why would a young person vote in a hardcore red or hardcore blue state? it doesn't really matter now does it. Down ballot wise sure it does, but at the end of the day, for President, a single vote in California honestly doesn't matter. It's going to be blue anyway. When you put it that way, the extra effort required to vote all of a sudden doesn't become worth it. Which is why making it as low effort as possible encourages people to vote more. 2. Don't care: Lots of people never felt like elections mattered, before 2016 of course. That is why you see such a high youth turnout this year, Trump f***ed the country and millions of people. Elections have consequences.
Figured I'd add my perspective here. Never considered myself political, and in the past I never had a clear understanding of what each party was supposed to stand for. My philosophy has always been, if I'm going to vote, it should be from an informed perspective, and not based on a political party. Prior to this election, the last time I voted was Gore vs. Bush, and it kind of affirmed my general belief that it wasn't a huge deal who was president. Starting the Iraq war based on BS claims of WMD was probably my biggest gripe with the Bush presidency. I've lived in Asia since before Obama's first election, and haven't bothered to vote absentee due to being from Texas (electoral college rationale), and not really keeping a close tabs on politics. Even when Trump was elected, I figured he'd turn it down a notch, but if anything, he's turned it up. The last 4 years motivated me enough to vote absentee, but it can be a bit of a nerve wracking process. You have to submit the request to receive the ballot, fill it out, and send it back. I requested it via email so I could at least rule out the issue of receiving it in a timely manner, and got it on Sep 20. Then you need to print it out, make sure you fill it out properly, put it in the right number of envelopes, and send it back. I decided to send it to the local US embassy equivalent and let them ship it back, since I figured that would be more reliable. Even then, it took over 3 weeks before I saw confirmation on the online system that my ballot had been received. So is it easy to vote? Yes, I'd say it's fairly easy to vote, but there are definitely worries that something will get messed up along the way. Even now, I'm not sure how closely my current signature matches the one they have on file, and I wasn't aware that was a way they were disqualifying votes when I sent in my ballot, so I didn't take special care to make sure my signature matches the one on my DL. I'm also not sure how reliable the system is for reporting when your ballot is received. It worked in my case, but I could see it not working, or updating too late, at which point you're probably SOL. I hope there can be modifications to the electoral college system. I'd be happy if they kept the number of votes each states get the same, and just prorated the# based on the popular vote. I believe there are states that do this already, and it should still allow the smaller states to have more influence than they otherwise would in a straight popular vote system.
