Will the Youth Truly "Knock the Vote"?

The Dear Young People, Don't Vote: A Knock the Vote PSA encourages the youth and younger generation as a whole to get out and vote. Elderly folks in the video are somewhat comedically naming several issues that were addressed in the Primary Election such as school shootings and climate change. They remind young people that they aren’t the ones who are going to have to deal with the long-term repercussions of the outcomes of the election. School shootings don’t directly affect them as they are no longer in school, they won’t necessarily be alive to witness and experience the harsher consequences of climate change. The campaign calls those to actively vote “The Doers” while naming this generation “The Whiners” as we are known to complain about the wrongdoings and injustices of the world but don’t seem to proactively do what we can to resolve or prevent them from occurring.

I think that the ad was comedic and definitely may have caught the attention of some people and served the purpose, however, it lacked diversity and therefore, wouldn’t have been appealing to everyone. The faces of the campaign were elderly White people which not all young people can identify with -- quite frankly, majority of millennials cannot identify with these people. I doubt that minority youth who are already skeptical of the government and recognize the ways in which the laws enforce their oppression are going to be convinced that their vote matters by being told condescendingly by individuals who actually benefit from that oppression. Also, our generation is often in defence against our elders as they seem to be hypercritical of everything we do so being called “whiners” may not be the best approach.

Altogether, while the campaign may successfully increase voter turn out in one demographic, it certainly won’t be convincing very many youth who fit into marginalized groups of anything other than the fact that they are still thought of last in their own country at all times.