Gretchen Pikus
The Democracy Project
Project Lesson: Who affect public policy?
Content Narrative
This lesson is designed to increase student awareness of political policy priority issues to each voting age group (18-24, 25-40, 41-64, +65). Students will also evaluate the policies with help from the appropriate age group to lobby the politicians to vote for bills the group supports. Students will participate first hand in the reasoning between political choices and how they are influenced. Students will create their own plan of action to influence policy on local, state or national level and implement their plan.
This lesson is a response to a National Association of Secretaries of State National Conference. The focus of the conference was "American Youth Attitudes on Politics, Citizenship, Government and Voting." The New Millennium Project, authored by the Secretaries of States, reports that only 49% of the population voted in the 1996 national election. A strong concern falls on citizens’ lack of voter participation and the indifference to making American political policy. As further evidence, the project states that voter turnout was the lowest in the 1998 midterm election since World War II. Pinpointed were the 18-24 year old citizens, "the largest generation of young people in our country’s history, recently surpassing the Baby Boom generation," who voted fewer than one out of five. The project summarized poll results that young people think government is run by a few wealthy, elite few or big business, politicians are dishonest, schools are not doing a good job getting young people to vote, and many young people just do not see government affects them. The Secretaries of State have committed to improving citizenship of the 18-24 year old group. The United States Census Bureau confers why this indifference is dangerous and improving citizenship is necessary. As stated by the US Census Bureau on their website,
The voting-age population of the United States is expected to reach 196.5 million persons by November 1, 1996, up
from an estimated 189.5 million in November 1992. Women will number 102.2 million and represent 52 percent of
the voting-age population by November 1996 and will out-number men by 7.9 million. The African
-American population will number 22.9 million persons and represent 12 percent of the voting-age
population. Whites will represent 165.2 million persons, accounting for 84 percent of the voting-age population;
another 8.4 million persons or 4 percent of the population will be races other than White or African-American;
persons of other races include Asian or Pacific Islander, American Indian, Eskimo, and Aleut.
Hispanics (who may be of any race) will number 18.6 million or 9 percent of the electorate.
California, the largest State in the Nation, will have a projected 23.1 million persons of voting age in the November
1996 election.
http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/voting/proj/votepg2.txtAs a result, students need to understand identify policies that are important to them, how these policies collaborate or conflict with other voting age groups, and how it is possible to influence the makers of policy. As Alan Rosenthal suggest in The Decline of Representative Democracy, it is possible that grassroots political involvement will stimulate policy involvement and voter turnout. Therefore, motivating the students to take action on their priorities and seeing how their ideas fit in the realm of society will encourage them to evaluate priorities and speak their voice through voting.
gpikus@ezol.com
