BOISE, ID (CBS2) — Voter turnout in Ada County is expected to reach anywhere between 80-90% of registered voters, according to Ada County Clerk Trent Tripple.
A part of that large, expected turnout is the impact of the youth vote, defined as the age group 18-29 years old, often voting for the first time in 2024.
Speaking with two political science students at Boise State University, they both made clear that although they’d like to see decreased partisanship and a return to discourse, they both felt like there were strong political divides among their peers, particularly around local issues.”
“I think it would make a lot of changes in our elections,” Ethan LaHague, a Boise State University political science major said. “Open primaries you can make a case for, but ranked-choice voting I think is a bigger change, and its interests aren’t being sold.”
LaHague said that Boise State University students were fortunate to have strong exposure to the discussion around Proposition One, the University just held a debate on the issue last week.
“A lot of my classmates are in support of Prop One,” Donia Tolentino, a BSU political science student said. “We have a bit more knowledge on what the issues mean and how exactly it would affect our system, but I do understand why there is hesitation. It is a really big change.”
Another issue met with disagreement among their peers: Idaho’s proposed constitutional amendment, which seeks to add language that proponents say would “expressly prohibit non-citizens from voting.”
“We need to be really careful when considering language and changes like this,” LaHague said. “Based on what the feeling is, I think it’s more important. The value of having trust in our elections and dispersing that doubt we’ve been seeing; I would say it’s more important.”
But opposing students say both Idaho’s and the United States’ Constitutions already make non-citizen voting in state and federal elections illegal and thus interpret the ballot measure as sending a message.
“I guess I understand why they would want to word it differently,” Tolentino said. “Both of my parents are immigrants, and I work a lot with the immigrant community. I think rewording is, I don’t want to say hurtful, but it puts in the notion that they really don’t want us to vote, even though we can’t already.”
The total impact of the youth vote in 2024 remains to be seen, but in 2020, 55% of registered voters aged 18-29 voted, surpassing a total not reached since 1972.
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