Having an open family isn’t always the best. Some people may think it’s great because they will come out and say anything that is bothering them. However, it can turn into a very serious fight depending on the topic of conversation. For instance, in my family when it comes to politics, you don’t want to be in the middle of the two sides. My mom’s side is very democratic and my dad’s side is strongly republic. Political discussions are very serious, a heated debate.

It’s not as easy now, at seventeen and having only a few months until turning the voting age, to deal with the family arguments about the politics. When I was younger, my brother and I would just sit silently as they went on and on about the war in Iraq, taxes, health care and other political topics. We weren’t adults, we didn’t care about the taxes or health care, so we just sat there. Recently, however, my brother has started to get into to conversations and it made me wonder what got into him and why he was joining the conversation. He wasn’t even at the voting age when he would start to try and argue the different views. Maybe he was just trying to get his views out? He was coming out and showing that he is going to take apart in voting as soon as he turns eighteen. It also showed how even thought there are families who may argue about politics it’s good to talk about it because you get your point out and try to have your family members engage in voting. It made me think about the sudden upgrade in the number of young voters. Before there weren’t as many voters but in this last election there were record numbers of voters because the younger ones who had just turned the age to vote decided they wanted to be apart of it. On CNNpolitics.com they said that there were 125,225,901 votes in the 2008 election. They also have a table that shows the votes by age of the voter. People ages 18-29 where at 18% of the vote, 30-44 where at 29% of the vote, 45-64 where at 37% of the vote and 65 and older where at 16% of the vote. The 18-29 year olds isn’t at the highest percent but they are at least not at the bottom. They are starting to get involved a lot more.

I guess these days the younger voters are realizing that they can make a difference. If they get involved, come out with their ideas and their beliefs of what this country should do, then they can get their view out and have more people think the same they do. If you want an issue in this country to change, you can’t just complain about what is going on when you didn’t even vote yourself. You have to get out there, show your beliefs and what you think should happen and say you’re going to vote for this because it will help the situation.
If you do this people will hear you. They might pretend that they don’t care or their not listening but they will go on and later think about it. They will wonder if they should listen to what you think because it sounded like a good thought. It will be in the back of their mind until the day its time to vote and they will think about it. They could even change the way they were going to vote just because they saw that teenager out on the street talking about it, making a difference to show what should be going on.
An example of this was on the most recent season of “Real World” on MTV, it was during the election and it showed the roommates going out to vote and later to watch the election and Obama win. There were people outside, campaigning when they went to go vote to vote for Obama or McCain. The younger people were expressing who they voted for and why and how that is good and what it will do to help our country. They weren’t just sitting on the couch at home not even caring about the election; they wanted Obama or McCain to win so they came out to vote.

This is why I think that younger voters are getting involved now because they are starting to realize that things aren’t going to change unless everyone votes, and gets their word out; its time to have the younger generation take control and not act like kids anymore. They are living up to their age and showing that they aren’t the little middle school teens anymore, they know what’s going on in today’s world and they want to make a difference. That must have been why my brother was getting in to the conversation; he wanted to be a part of it. He wanted his views out there and he wanted to show that he is interested in voting, he did vote in the 2008 election. Nothing happens if you sit and don’t vote and try to make the difference. People wanted something new in this past election, a non-white president, and they got it. They got it because they came out and they voted.







Works Cited
“Exit Poll: National” CNN.Politics.com. 17.Novemeber 2008. 28 October. 2009. Web