Zachary Noyce: Stop leaving would-be voters behind

I was so excited.

And then so disappointed. For the first time in my life, I was going to actually exercise a right. I mean, I've spoken freely, worshiped freely, refused to say things that would get me in trouble, and I've never let a division of the Army spend the night in my house. But I imagine that these rights pretty much come with the territory of having a pulse, a brain, and a voice, regardless of crinkly yellow paper saying I have them.

It was the day of the Pennsylvania primary, and it was going to be the first time I would ever vote on something other than a new student government or a family dinner. Finally, exercising my rights would matter.

Finally, I would matter.

But when I showed up at the polls at David Rittenhouse Labs (which was hard enough for me with my intense fear of all things math), I wasn't on the list. It was both frustrating and confusing to me. I remember filling out a registration card and doing everything I thought I had to do in order to vote: I turned eighteen, I registered, and I passed up on every opportunity to commit a felony.

I guess that somewhere between my filling out the card and its processing, someone lost the thing. I don't blame him. Lord knows I've made mistakes before. It's possible -- even probable -- that the error was my own. Maybe I accidentally checked a wrong box somewhere. My handwriting isn't that great; maybe a seven in my social security number looked like a one.

But when all is said and done, it is rather insignificant to attempt assigning blame. The point is that I wanted to vote and I didn't get to. And many people similar stories. Lots of people who want to vote just don't get to: people who don't how to register, people whose registration doesn't go through, people who are sick on Election Day, people who work long hours on Election Day, people who don't know where they are supposed to vote.

Amidst all this talk of low voter turnout among young people, I feel so devastated. I'm part of the statistic that lets politicians ignore issues important to us, pundits to droll on about how we don't care about our country, and senior citizens to insist that because we haven't killed enough Nazis or Communists, our generation hasn't accomplished anything. As much as I really do care about issues in my country, I don't matter because, for all intents and purposes, right now I'm just another one of America's worthless apathetic non-voters.

I'm starting to think that this country's problem with voter turnout may have more to do with the system and less to do with the people than anyone lets on. Sure, the problem lies a little with both the people and the system, but the problems in the system are far more easily fixed. In a democratic republic, what could be more important than making sure as many people as possible vote on those too-rare occasions when there is an election? I have several suggestions that could help fix this problem. Here are a few.

Give people more time to vote. Have you ever been so busy that you forgot to do something? Or simply forgot something for no good reason? I'm sure that people have neglected voting for reasons as simple as they were sick, busy, or forgetful. I think that giving people more than one day to vote is not an unreasonable request when people hardly have a chance to vote more than once or twice a year.

Remind people to vote. Years ago, the government gave private corporations the airwaves, and in exchange, the networks have to make concessions to them every now and again - storm warnings, public service announcements, presidential addresses. Why not force the networks to air public service announcements reminding people to vote and giving them a number to call that can answer any questions people have or arrange a ride to the polls for them?

Make it a holiday. Sure some people would skip town, but many more people would be available to vote if one day the polls opened was a paid public holiday. Even a law saying that employers must grant a break long enough for people to cast their vote on that day would do great things. When there is no national holiday to honor the only thing that makes our nation a democracy, not only does it hurt turnout, it sends an extremely bad message about our national priorities. We rightly honor our glorious past on Memorial Day, why not honor our present and hope for a better future on an election holiday?

Now is the time to make real changes that could affect voter turnout in this country instead of consistently blaming non-voters like me. We need to start addressing low turnout as a reparable problem, and not an incurable disease.

I'm Zachary Noyce, and I approved this message.

Zachary Noyce is a College sophomore from Taylorsville, UT.

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