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Tyenna Krider

Cyrstal Matey

English 101:13

24 October 2018

Voting Among Young America

The youth of American has had the lowest voter turnout, but as all other age groups have

decreased the young vote has increased. Americans age thirty and under represents forty-eight

million votes. Half of the qualified youth voted in the 2016 general elections. America’s usage of

technological advancements, in addition to celebrity advocacy, and digital media has effectively

reached the attention of the youth and has persuaded more Americans under 30 to participate in

voting elections. The three articles I chose to rhetorically analyze, that discuss the progression of

youth voting among Americans are Obamania: Media Tactics Drawing Youth to the Voting

Booths by Rashid Shabazz, Wikileaks: Hillary Plotted Fake ‘Grassroots’ Campaign Using

Celebs to Con Youth Into Voting For Her by Chris Menahan and A tech Investor Brought Cell

Phone Voting to West Virginia, Igniting Debate About Access and Security by Chris Good.

The most successful voter turnout of the decade has been the 2008 presidential election

where the turnout rate had been fifty-two percent. Rashid Shabazz believed Obama displayed

ethos in his 2008 presidential campaign by advertising on tools that were more common and

relatable to the youth which helped increase the youth voting bloc. The Obama campaign used

social networking sites including Facebook, Myspace, and YouTube. In June of 2008 Facebook

had 131 million users that Obama was able to campaign to. By the late 2007 and early 2008,

Myspace had been considered the leading social networking site. Outside of the major social

media networks at the time, Obama used text messaging, films, podcast, radio, and other media
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to appeal to the youth. The author mentions that rap superstars “Nas and Jay-Z had endorsed

Senator Obama in the November 2008 issue of VIBE.” Obama realized that he could gain many

votes by having intelligent well-known rappers support him, which further displayed his ethos on

youth voting. The Obama campaign used both social networks and celebrity support as a tactic to

have the most successful youth voting turnout of the decade.

Following the trend of the 2008 Obama campaign, Hillary Clinton attempted to use

celebrities to increase her chances to win the 2016 presidential campaign. The difference

between the Clinton and Obama campaign is that Hillary Clinton received tons of negative

backlash for her way of trying to get celebrities to endorse her. Hillary Clinton personal email

account had undergone an FBI investigation. Chris Menahan wrote an article based on the

Clinton email controversy that gives the readers a good sense of his distaste for Hillary Clinton.

While reading the article on Infowars.com words like “stupid” or “fake” or “con” are said about

Clinton displaying the rhetors pathos. The article includes a “concept paper” where Clinton

strategized “use young elected officials and entertainers to build a ‘grassroots’ movement of

under 40 voters.” But readers can obviously sense the displeasure the author, of the article, has

for Hillary Clinton because the diction they chose to use while criticizing her strategy to win the

2016 Presidential election. Also, at the end of the article, there is a cartoon of Clinton to enhance

face wrinkle… it can be inferred that the picture applies ugly features to Clinton because they

believed that her actions are ugly. The vivid image at the end of the article creates a negative

connotation of pathos. Although the publisher of the article, Chris Menahan, disagreed with

Hilary Clinton’s way of campaigning tactics, the FBI announced that Clinton was “extremely

careless” but there would be no charges filed against her.

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While, emails aren’t the most popular way to increase young voters’ awareness, Brad

Tusk, a former political operative has found a technique to modernize voting to appeal to young

voters. Brad Tusk has invented a system that will allow a few hundred West Virginians to vote

for federal candidates via a smartphone app. Tusk uses the logic of the Agrarian society from

two-hundred and fifty years past by making an easy voting system. Tusk is very hopeful that the

idea of allowing voters to participate in the federal election via smartphone will intrigue state and

national officials and expand beyond the federal election. Brad Tusk has an effective amount of

ethos by creating a way to vote that appeals to the youth. Although, the publisher of the article

written on ABCnew.com doesn’t weigh in on his opinion of whether or not he feels that Brad

Tusk’s idea is useful… the state of West Virginia doesn’t foresee the invention expanding to

more than the two counties that are already participating. The state of West Virginia only plans

to expand Brad Tusk’s voting system for members of the military that are serving overseas.

Towards the end of the article, the author revealed how skeptical state officials feel about the

security of casting a vote via a smartphone app. The thoughts of West Virginia state officials

create a negative pathos for Tusk’s invention. In order to refute the state’s idea of insecurity, the

co-founder Voatz criticizes the current voting system in America. Whether or not elected state

officials agree with Tusk and Voatz invention, the advanced voting system does use the

progression of technology. Also, if the nation were to all agree on allowing voters to cast a vote

via smartphone the number of voter thirty and under would likely to increase substantially.

Presidential candidates and other political officials who'd like to see the votes of younger

Americans increase should continue to celebrities to endorse their campaigns, they should

continue to find savvy ways to advertise via social media, and also as technology in America

advances, I am confident elected officials will find ways to incorporate cellular devices in the
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voting system. Not only should state and national officials care about increasing the vote of the

youth, but those among the eight-teen to thirty-year-old voters should advocate for the voting

system to simplify and persuade their peers to vote. Should presidential candidates not continue

to use and create new tactics, the youth vote in America will decline and if the youth don’t

practice voting while they are still young, then they won’t fill the need to do it as they become

the older generation which will cause for a decline in voting entirely.
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Works Cited

Shabazz, Rashid K. “Obamania: Media Tactics Drawing Youth to the Voting Booth.” Youth

Media Reporter, vol. 2, no. 1–6, Dec. 2008, pp. 237–241. EBSCOhost,

login.libproxy.uncg.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&d

b=ufh&AN=38591010&site=ehost-live

Good, Chris. “A Tech Investor Brought Cell Phone Voting to West Virginia, Igniting Debate

about Access and Security.” ABC News, ABC News Network, 19 Oct. 2018,

abcnews.go.com/Politics/tech-investor-brought-cell-phone-voting-west-

virginia/story?id=58592686.

“Wikileaks: Hillary Plotted Fake 'Grassroots' Campaign Using Celebs to Con Youth Into Voting

for Her.” Alex Jones' InfoWars, 25 Oct. 2016, www.infowars.com/wikileaks-hillary-

plotted-fake-grassroots-campaign-using-celebs-to-con-youth-into-voting-for-her/.