Mitch LeClair

mleclair2@stcloud.gannett.com

Views on voting%2C parties%2C online systems and more vary among young people

Engagement depends on the topic%2C voters and candidates say

About 700%2C000 people younger than 45 voted in Minnesota last week

The 2014 midterm election is over, with about 2 million ballots finding a box in Minnesota.

According to exit polls reported by ABC News, 35 percent of Minnesota voters in the election were younger than 45.

Views on voting among those 700,000 vary, and they will help shape campaigns, elections and government in the future.

Some young Minnesotans might feel indifferent; none with whom the Times spoke was lacking in spirit.

Young people are "so disenfranchised," said John Denney, 26, this year's Independence Party of Minnesota candidate for the 6th Congressional District.

They assume there's nothing to vote for, he said, and it "breeds a lot of apathy."

"Young people have been getting hit left and right for being apathetic," said Dan Wolgamott, 24, the DFL candidate for House 14A.

Wolgamott said energizing attitudes is the job of political campaigns, moving young minds from one engagement extreme to the other.

On Thursday, St. John's University hosted its regular Politics and a Pint event in Brother Willie's Pub.

Young people like the attendees of the event at his alma mater are engaged, Wolgamott said.

On the other hand, many younger people are indeed apathetic. But he said once a campaign connects with them on tuition and other topics, they realize their democratic choices matter.

Anne Gleich and Kyle Smith, both part of the College Democrats group at the College of St. Benedict and St. John's, agree that topic visibility — real or imagined — can make the difference between entering a polling place and staying home.

In 2012, voter ID and same-sex marriage issues seemed to directly affect young people and motivate that part of the populace, they said.

Policy issues such as the tuition freeze put in place last year are harder to see on a private campus, Gleich said, and may motivate state-college enrollees more.

Brandon Brist, a St. John's student and College Republicans treasurer, said, "Social issues get the young people mobilized."

He said talk of transportation is often easily ignored.

"Don't worry about it, it's just roads, no big deal," Brist said of some of his peers' attitudes.

Students at the Collegeville campus can take for granted having goods delivered to the somewhat-isolated area, he said.

Young people are looking for fresh political faces, said Aly Eichman, St. Cloud State University student and political director of the Minnesota College Republicans.

"We're kind of, in a general way, sick and tired of what has happened in the past," she said.

Eichman said it's not so much the size of government that is motivating young people but more a desire to be left alone.

And economic uncertainty is strong, Eichman said.

"We don't feel like we're going to be better off than our parents," she said.

Per capita annual wages in Minnesota, when adjusted for inflation, rose about 1.8 percent yearly from 1993 to 2013.

That's higher than the 1.1 percent annual rise in the previous 20 years, but it's lower than the 4.5 percent rise from 1953 to 1973 and 9 percent increase from 1933 to 1953.

Former IPM candidate Denney echoed that feeling of despair.

He said young people are "very much overly burdened," citing the Affordable Care Act, Social Security system and being stuck in service-sector jobs.

Young people "don't always consider themselves as part of the system," said Mike Sowada, a St. John's student and College Republican. He said, however, "The system is powered through the people."

One person isn't likely to be the deciding vote, but it still matters, former DFL candidate Wolgamott said.

Votes give mandates and "political capital to people you agree with," he said.

Young people's views on the two groups with the most political capital in Minnesota — the two major parties — also vary.

Sowada said he likes the two-party system, citing what he called the GOP's "very big house."

Conservatives in general, party-line Republicans, tea partyers and libertarians can all find a home, he said.

"It works well grouping people like that," letting people find their sects, Sowada said.

The executive director of the Libertarian Party of Minnesota disagrees.

Andy Burns, 26, said the two-party system is flawed and represents the "biggest disenfranchisement" affecting young people.

"We could bring in so many more voters if we have a more diverse political system," he said. "You need big changes in how voting is done before people feel like, 'Hey something's changed, the lesser of two evils thing is gone, I can vote my conscience.'"

One of the ways to change how people vote, which Burns advocates, is ranked-choice voting, where people rank multiple candidates in order of preference.

Minneapolis has used the system since 2009.

In 2013, voters had about three dozen choices for mayor in the state's largest city.

Smith, the College Democrat at St. John's, says the system would allow more moderate candidates into races.

He said it could increase participation and decrease partisanship.

It could also increase problems, according to Ashley Bukowski, the president of the College Republicans at St. Ben's and St. John's.

She said some political systems that have hundreds of parties, like in India, can be inefficient.

One system not garnering much support is mandatory balloting, where a citizen must vote or face punishment.

A commonly cited example of this is Australia.

Its system of obligatory voting by mail is mostly a legacy of colonization, said Steve Frank, professor of political science at St. Cloud State and co-director of the SCSU Survey.

His colleague and chair of the political science department, Jason Royce Lindsey, said most countries that have compulsory voting are centralized systems that might have one election every five years.

There are 500,000 elective offices in this country, Lindsey said. United States citizens vote every other year, sometimes more often.

Frank doubted another emerging voting system — online polling — could work for this country.

He said the commonly used example of Estonia has a population smaller than the Twin Cities area, or about 0.4 percent of the U.S. populace, and is not a great example.

Multiple young people the Times interviewed cited security concerns with online voting, though many were excited about the possibility.

Lindsey said it could degrade democracy. The communal, shared experience of going to a polling place would be lost.

For at least one young person in St. Cloud, the recent election was a negative experience.

Tyler Denzine, 26, recently moved from Indiana.

He tried to have his brother — incidentally, his identical twin — vouch for his residency at his polling place. An election official rejected him.

A phone call to the city clerk cleared up the problem, and Denzine was able to cast a ballot.

"I'd never been so disappointed in the election process before," he said.

Many young people are cynical, Denney said, but they're optimistic about the future.

Whatever their outlook, hundreds of thousands of young people are sure to vote in the next election — for many reasons.

"It's basically the bare minimum you can do to be civically engaged," Brist said.

After all, as Sowada said, quoting his father's use of a common saying: "The world is run by those who show up."

Contact Mitch on Twitter @leclairmitch and 428-1336.