Reader comments
Young people need to step up and start voting

why is it that we insist on voting in such an obsolete manner.
Young people find it difficult to stand in line for hours.
The truth is that between going to school full time and then turning around and working a full time job there literally is not any time to make it to the polls.
If voting was done like it should be, via computers over the internet, voting by young people would approach numbers that would blow other voters out of the water.
They would swing elections.
Older voters could still vote the old way if they choose. Via punch cards
For those who are going to say what about fraud.
The current system certainly is full of all kinds of opportunities for fraud.
And remember that our entire economy. Your bank records and balances. Are all dependant on computers systems being safe and secure.

This assumption could use more research. BYU is a bad case study since so many of the students are transplants who maintain residency in their parents' hometown. The university is a commuter school so most students would live in precincts spread across the valley.

Marjorie, start advocating for elections where it's more likely that your vote will actually count and more Utahns, young to old, will start showing up at the polls.

So long as the Republicrats and Democans cheat us out of competitive elections with their two-party system, not voting as a form of civil disobedience makes more sense.

The Center for Voting and Democracy can provide you with information on how more representative elections are being conducted outside of Utah.

The first time I was old enough to vote, the winner of the nation's highest office was APPOINTED, not elected. No one with any authority even bothered to try to figure out who the honest winner was. They just turned the situation over to semi-secret arbitration from nine justices thousands of miles removed from the point of confusion. The best part was that some of the arbiters were given their sweet jobs by the daddy of the "winning" candidate. Regardless of which candidate one supported, wasn't it worth the integrity of our democratic process to expend every effort to find the true winner? And you wonder why young people are apathetic; why they feel their vote is meaningless; why sittin' at home watchin' the TeeVee feels more purposeful than going out after a full day of work/school? How about another reason: people my age have NEVER seen an American president not named "Bush" or "Clinton", and we may not even after this election. Oh, I forgot about Reagan, the nice grandpa I saw on TV as a child whose economic policies created the debt I'll be paying when I'M senile. Way to go Baby Boomers. Y'all sure picked some winners.

Some of the comments posted sure show Marjorie's point. I completely agree with her. Maybe "hatuletoh" should try researching how a president is actually elected, according to the constitution. Get back to us on that if you ever figure it out.

People my age (in college) don't seem to have any idea what is going on. Deciding to vote helps change that because, you take some responsibility on yourself and you want to make sure you are right. Some people think we can get more voters just by changing how we vote or the methods we use, but where is the good in that if no one researches issues?

If there is any fault of the previous generation I would point to failure to teach the younger generation how our government works and why it is set up the way it is. But maybe we just weren't paying attention because we already have all the answers.

Anon: I'm not apathetic to voting because I'm uninformed. Quite the contrary: I frequently bore friends and relatives to tears with political discussions and diatribes. I don't care about voting because I believe these days it's just a choice between the puppet on the left, and the puppet on the right (pun intended).

Both Washington and that earthquake-proofed palace up at 130 North State Street are awash with lobbyist money, and all you have to do to know what a huge influence that my buys is to see that the "donors" of said money continue to donate. Further evidence is found in the pathetic list of excuses our legislators give each year for why they can't pass a bill stating simply something like, "it's against the law for a public offical to accept lobbyist money and/or gifts".

I'd love to think that higher voter turn out would cure what ails our republic, but the ones in power are just too interested in protecting the power they have. I suspect that we've reached a point where only the remedy will come from more "hands-on" action. You know, like they did it Boston a couple hundred years ago . . .