In 1896, when the United States was emerging from an unprecedented economic depression and mired in the social turmoil of the post-war era, voter turnout was close to 80 percent, nearly its highest point in our history. This, at a time when fewer than 5 percent of Americans had college degrees and fewer than 20 percent were high school educated. For those who had recently acquired the right, to vote was to take one's life into one's hands; for those who could read, access to "breaking news" was only available through telegraph and newspapers. Meanwhile, political discourse was, by today's standards, verbose, intricate, and almost unintelligible.
Today, barely half of our citizenry avails itself of the right to vote. Yet all have that right and most have higher levels of education than ever before. Moreover, the Internet and the news cycles provide access to more byte-sized and easily consumable information about the political process than one could ever want. Among our very own Millennial generation, voter participation is below the national average.
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