First Person: Young voters showed up, made a difference

Tuesday was only the second time I’ve voted.

Not because I’ve missed a couple of trips to the polls or because I’m lazy, but because I’m 23. The last time I voted I was a 19-year-old college student.

In 2004, my age group — those born in the 1980s or 1990s — the Millennials, were supposed to be the deal-breakers in the election. They barely showed up.
What a difference four years makes.

On Tuesday, I woke up and rushed to my polling place in Beauregard. I expected long lines, but was sort of disappointed (in a weird way) when it only took me about four and a half minutes to vote.

Later in the evening, after getting to work, I spoke with about a dozen Auburn University students at a watch party in the ballroom at the new Student Center, many of whom were first-time or second-time voters.

There was a sense of watching history unfold. And not just because a black man was running for president, but because a woman was running for vice-president as well.

A little over a year ago, New York Times opinion writer Thomas L. Friedman called my generation, the Millennials, the Quiet Generation.

“But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good. When I think of the huge budget deficit, Social Security deficit and ecological deficit that our generation is leaving this generation, if they are not spitting mad, well, then they’re just not paying attention. And we’ll just keep piling it on them,” he said.

Friedman is right. Until Tuesday, many Millennials did most of their assembling online. Facebook, My Space, blogs and other social networking sites made it easy to point and click your way into a movement.

Groups like “I Support Barack Obama — And I’m Telling My Friends” and “100,000,000 For McCain/Palin ’08” on Facebook and MySpace allow young adults and teenagers to show their support simply by clicking a mouse. Groups range from those in favor of barbecue tasting to those against genocide.

But what does that really do? Nothing but advertise an affiliation.

That changed on Tuesday.

Not only were Millennials going out to the polls, they were organized on the ground and working for their respective campaigns. They left their homes and came out, in droves, to the student center to observe history being made. Most of them wore “I Voted” stickers.

It was a proud moment for me, as a member of Generation Y, to see young adults break away from their computers, their TVs, their busy lives to vote.

Record voter turnout was recorded on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported. Young Americans were among the 133.3 million people who went to the polls.

“Young voters have dispelled the notion of an apathetic generation and proved the pundits, reporters and political parties wrong by voting in record numbers today,” said Heather Smith, the executive director of Rock the Vote, in an Associated Press article. “The Millennial generation is making their mark on politics and shaping our future.”

National issues finally got big enough for us to sit up and notice. Or maybe we finally just put our money where our mouth is.

Either way, we were there when ...

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Brittany Whitley’s election night assignment was to gather reaction from a wide variety of voters. This was her second presidential election