Republicans have declared all-out war on younger voters: voting rights organizer
During the 2022 midterms, NBC News conducted exit polls that broke down voting results by everything from race to gender to age. Republicans didn't fare well among younger voters.
Voters aged 18-24 went Democrat by 61 percent, while voters aged 25-29 preferred Democrats by 65 percent. And voters aged 30-39 favored Democrats by 54 percent. These figures indicate that the GOP is faring even worse among Generation Z than among Millennials.
In an op-ed published by the Daily Beast on May 8, voting rights organizer and former congressional aide Rotimi Adeoye emphasizes that the GOP realizes it has a Gen-Z problem and is dealing with it by "working around the clock to make it harder for students to vote."
Adeoye points out that voter suppression bills aimed at college students have been pushed by Republicans in Florida, Georgia and Texas. And such bills, according to Adeoye, use the same suppression tactics Republicans have been using against African-American voters.
"This isn't new," Adeoye argues. "Conservatives have a history of suppressing voters they can't win over.… With a presidential election on the horizon, Republicans are hyper-aware of Gen Z's voting power. Although young voters in past elections have been inconsistent, Gen Z in the last midterm election put Republicans on notice. And since the GOP can't win young voters on the issues they care about…. voter suppression strategies used for decades to suppress minority voters are now being copied and pasted to suppress Gen Z voting."
The voting rights organizer continues, "But this can't last forever. Republicans are well aware that their archaic policy ideas alone won't bring in new voters. That's why they're scrambling to enforce these oppressive voting laws. They know that this new breed of Americans could boot them out of their cushy seats of power in a heartbeat."
Read Rotimi Adeoye's full Daily Beast op-ed at this link (subscription required).
