With the upcoming presidential election, one BYU professor is conducting research to remind young voters that they can make a difference.
Rebecca de Schweinitz, an associate professor at BYU, teaches classes in African American history and U.S. women’s history. Currently, one of her main research topics is the historic movement to lower the voting age to 18.
De Schweinitz said interest in this topic began after she finished her book on children and youth and the civil rights movement. As she was looking at papers for the western region of the NAACP, she noticed that the youth activists were involved in a collation campaign to lower the voting age to 18.
“That really piqued my interest and got me looking more narrowly at that movement and what was happening in the late 1960s and early '70s,” de Schweinitz said.
Since then, her research has taken her to many places such as the Franklin D. Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter Presidential Libraries, to study party and campaign strategies to motivate young voters.
She added that she finds stories along the way with her research.
One such story illustrated that Utah was in the forefront of encouraging youth participation in politics in the early '70s.
This story, which she also wrote about for an editorial in The Salt Lake Tribune, is about students from the University of Utah launching an initiative called “Participation 70,” in which they advocated for moderate policies and other contemporary issues.
This effort led to more than 300 students getting elected to neighborhood state offices, and their participation in Utah political forums helped determine candidate selection in several contests.
De Schweinitz relates this bit of Utah history, as well as another voting story, to young voters today.
“When Orrin Hatch was first elected to the Senate, he beat an incumbent in large part because of the help of students across the state,” de Schweinitz said. “So don't think that your vote and your efforts to engage in electoral politics don't matter. They certainly do.”
Her research has allowed her to gain new insights into the fight to lower the voting age and bust old myths about youth voting. One of the ways she does that is by reading student newspapers from the 20th century.
“I'm trying to track the ways that young people are engaging with politics across the 20th century, including during periods we often think of as youth being disengaged and apolitical,” de Schweinitz said.
“That's not true. That's not what's happening on campuses, and especially in the 1930s and '40s, and even more so in the 1950s,” she added.
Her former research assistants have expressed great admiration for her character and her research.
“She taught me the idea of self-fact, understanding who you are and claiming your identity despite the roles society expects you to take,” Sarai Silva, a former research assistant for de Schweinitz, said.
Talking about her experience with de Schweinitz, Maren Loveland, another former research assistant, noted that it was really cool to see what the youth in the past had to fight for because it is something she had never thought about or researched much before.
There are multiple additional observations that de Schweinitz has made in her studies including finding letters in the presidential libraries that shows high school, college students and even kids talking about politics.
She also noted young people who turned 18 were on the forefront of pushing Congress into action about voting rights.
With these stories of the past, there are also parallels with youth voting today, especially with the challenges that young voters face.
“It's hard for young people to feel connected, sometimes, to the communities that they're going to school in,” de Schweinitz said.
Regardless of the challenges, de Schweinitz said she sees hope in why students should vote in this upcoming election.
“Voting, in American democracy, represents your voice, your chance to be heard," de Schweinitz said "You have a stake in what happens in elections, more so than many other Americans.”
Silva also shared a similar sentiment, saying that de Schweinitz’s research is important especially with the stakes of the 2024 Presidential Election.
“Sometimes college students and even older adults think that voting doesn't matter, but it does,” Sarai Silva said. “We should learn from these young adults that voting is not the end of civic duty but the start.”
To learn more about voting and how to register, visit vote.org.