A Young Voter’s View of Election Day: The Future in my Hands

August 4, 2014 — As I searched Michigan State University’s giant resource fair for the “golden club” that would help me “find myself” during freshman year, a voice in all the promotional speeches caught my attention.

“Hey! Do you want to register to vote?”

In all the commotion, a short, red-headed girl from the MSU Democrats’ booth held out a pen and a clipboard toward me with a voter registration form on it.

She was not asking me to vote Democrat. She was not asking me where my values align. She was asking me to become a part of my own future. She was giving me a chance to share my voice in elections.

Without a doubt in my mind, I knew that I wanted to register, to have the ability to vote, whether I used it or not. I did not hesitate when I took the pen from her outreached hand and started to fill out the form.

Almost four years later, that feeling has not left. I am still excited to go into the booth Aug. 5 and Nov. 4, to stick my voice to the “Man” with my vote, and to choose who I think will represent my community’s best interests.  I can never repay what that girl gave me.

Actions like hers, being there and putting the thought in our head that — “Oh right! I am a student, but I am also an American citizen!” — encourages people my age to vote. And there are multiple shared issues at stake that we need to be vocal about. Among them:

School cuts: Youths still have a decent memory of what we left in high school. Cuts to school funding prevented some of us from receiving the best education possible and maybe even from getting into the college that we wanted. Some struggled worse than others, but I remember when we were still using history books a decade old.

Student debt: When coming to college, sometimes all we can see are dollar signs, and not in a good way. First school cuts, than glaciers of student debt! Compared to other states, Michigan ranks 45th in college affordability, as found in the 2013 “Trends in College Pricing” report. The Senate Fiscal Agency reports that Michigan higher education funding is down $500 million from 2000.

Between underfunded schools and skyrocketing tuition, education these days seems more like a game of pick your poison. Everyone’s future will feel these effects.

Marriage Equality: College is about being exposed to new cultures and people, and we get to know friends and people with diverse sexual orientations. They are people, your children, no better or worse than any other person. We care about our friends and we want them to be just as happy and treated just as fairly as heterosexual citizens. Whether if you agree with it or not, marriage equality is supported by 81 percent of 18 -29-year-olds, according to a 2013 poll by the Washington Post and ABC News.

It’s our future. It feels far away and we may have no clear idea where we see ourselves in it yet, but we shape it to the way we want it with the proactive actions we take today. This week, it starts with who we choose to elect.

-Marlee Sherrod

Marlee Sherrod is working as a summer intern for Michigan’s Children while attending Michigan State University. She is studying Comparative Cultures and Politics at MSU’s James Madison College of Public Affairs, and English. Her opinions are her own, and are not intended to represent Michigan’s Children.