Democracy is under attack. The Colorado River and Lake Mead are drying up. The costs of housing and education are skyrocketing.

Young people’s voices and votes can only be counted if they cast a ballot.

And given the stakes of this year’s elections and the existential threats young Nevadans are inheriting from prior generations, ensuring that the voices of young people are heard and counted has never been more important.

Younger voters, the older generation that got us to this perilous place fear you. They want to make it harder for you to vote. They want you to stay home. But you can transform American politics and save the nation.

Elected officials are counting on young voters being disengaged. They’re counting on the knowledge that historically, voter turnout increases with age, allowing them to marginalize the voices and interests of younger voters without consequence.

But this year can be different. It must be different. Your future is at stake, and it won’t be the baby boomers or even Generation X that suffers the consequences.

Young people are accustomed to having their ideas dismissed.

A 2020 study by researchers at the University of Toronto and Furman University found that 49.5% of young adults reported experiencing disrespect and negative assumptions about emotional and cognitive abilities, due to nothing more than their age.

They have also been the repeated targets of disenfranchisement, with Republican leaders attempting to ban common documents used by young people to verify identity and eligibility, such as student IDs, rental agreements and jointly held banking and credit accounts.

Fortunately, they can’t take away the fact that within the boundaries of a district, the vote of an 18-year-old counts the same as a vote from a 65-year-old. And young people have every incentive to turn out and place their issues and voices at the center of this year’s elections.

According to the Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging at Washington University in St. Louis, the current generation of young people are the first generation in U.S. history that will be economically worse off than the generation that came before them. That’s not an accident. It’s the result of 40 years of short-sided policies that created short-term profits and concentrated wealth at the expense of future generations.

Both major political parties had a role in getting us to where we are today. But only one of those parties is trying to learn from its mistakes and look forward to a better future, rather than backward to a fictional revisionist version of the past. Only one is trying to make things right for young people, their children and their children’s children.

Over the past two years Democrats have successfully passed legislation to:

• Rebuild America’s aging infrastructure.

• Fund our struggling education systems.

• Expand affordable child care and education opportunities.

• Restore a competitive trade balance with China by beginning to return manufacturing to the Americas.

• Reduce the costs of health care and prescription medication.

• Provide millions of Americans with access to affordable and reliable high-speed internet.

• Make the largest investment in addressing global climate change of any country in the world.

And they did all of it while successfully reducing the spread and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic.

You might not agree with all of those policy choices, but it’s undeniable that they are forward-thinking investments in the future.

Meanwhile, the Republican party, under the leadership and direction of Donald Trump, has been focused on regressive, backwards-looking policies that seek to “make America great again” by undoing the progress of past decades. Their major accomplishments during that same time frame include:

• Continuing decades of climate change denialism, science denialism and conspiracy theory.

• Successfully reversing 50 years of established precedent and civil rights by overturning Roe v. Wade.

• Failing, for the 165th time, to overturn the Affordable Care Act.

• Following blindly as their leader organized a violent insurrection to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States.

These are truly regressive policies. But they are nothing compared to what Republican legislators are proposing should they take control of Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024. They want to shatter public education and shift taxpayer dollars to private religious schools. They want to ban a large number of books. They want to see how far they can push the boundaries of attacking civil liberties like marriage equality, free speech and the right to abortion. And they want to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency and burden future generations with cleaning up their messes while they line their pockets with corporate profits.

Even if none of these policies speak to you, the only way young people will get the issues they care about on the radar of their elected officials is to exercise their power and vote.

Younger voters are the key to stopping the madness and creating a better future. Older generations want to convince younger voters to stay home. Will young voters obey their elders? If they show up, they can throw off the shackles of the elder leadership and make the world a better place.

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