What's the rate of voting for people under thirty in the USA?
Youth vote in the United States
The youth vote in the United States is a political term used to describe 18- to 24-year-olds and their voting habits.[1] Many policy areas specifically affect the youth of the United States, such as education issues and the juvenile justice system.[2] The general trend in voter turnout for American elections has been decreasing for all age groups, but "young people's participation has taken the biggest nosedive".[3] This low youth turnout is part of the generational trend of voting activity. Young people have the lowest turnout, though as the individual ages, turnout increases to a peak at the age of 50 and then falls again.[4] Ever since 18-year-olds were given the right to vote in 1972, youth have been under represented at the polls.[1] In 1976, one of the first elections in which 18-year-olds were able to vote, 18-24 year-olds made up 18 percent of all eligible voters in America, but only 13 percent actually voted - an under-representation of one-third.[1] In the next election in 1978, youth were under-represented by 50 percent. "Seven out of ten young people…did not vote in the 1996 presidential election… 20 percent below the general turnout".[5] In 1998, out of the 13 percent of eligible youth voters in America, only five percent voted.[1] During the competitive presidential race of 2000, 36 percent of youth turned out to vote and in 2004, the "banner year in the history of youth voting," 47 percent of the American youth voted.[3] Recently, in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, the number of youth voters tripled and even quadrupled in some states compared to the 2004 elections.[6]
Federal government of the United States
Suffrage, commonly known as the ability to vote, has changed significantly over time. In the early years of the United States, voting was considered a matter for state governments, and was commonly restricted to white men who owned land. Direct elections were mostly held only for the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures, although what specific bodies were elected by the electorate varied from state to state. Under this original system, both senators representing each state in the U.S. Senate were chosen by a majority vote of the state legislature. Since the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, members of both houses of Congress have been directly elected. Today, U.S. citizens have almost universal suffrage under equal protection of the laws from the age of 18, regardless of race, gender, or wealth. The only significant exception to this is the disenfranchisement of convicted felons, and in some states former felons as well.