York County college-age voters say they can make a difference come November

Young voters in York County say they must vote and can make a difference in the midterm elections.

“I think there is a lot of apathy among millennials and generation Z,” said Shannon Barber, a junior at Winthrop University. “There is energy now because people see things happening ... that they just don’t like.”

Barber, 37, is president of the Winthrop Democrats. She said the group’s members are concerned with health care, climate change and social issues such as pro-choice and LGBTQ rights.

Barber said the group also aims to stop voter suppression of minorities and voter extremism, on both sides.

“We are a very divided nation right now from the left and the right,” she said. “A lot of people in our group do believe that regardless of age you can make a difference.”

Barber said a challenge to getting young voters to the polls is absentee voting. She said for some students the process can be difficult to complete.

“Anything, especially voting in America in general, that puts a barrier up is going to make people put that on the back burner,” Barber said. “Before they know it, the deadline’s past and they can’t register.”

Winthrop junior Nathan Crunkilton, 20, said young voters may be able to have an impact in the upcoming election. Crunkilton is the campus coordinator for the James Smith for governor campaign.

“Young voters are motivated with everything that’s happening around the U.S. and the climate we are in,” he said. “If young voters get out and vote, we can definitely see a change in South Carolina.”

Abigail Audette, a 20-year-old Winthrop junior and president of the Winthrop College Republicans, said she saw more of her peers get involved with the 2016 election.

“If we push that over to the next election, it will be awesome for both sides of the aisle,” Audette said.

More 18- to 29-year-olds are registering and voting since the Parkland, Fla., school shooting, according to TargetSmart, a political analysis company in Washington, D.C. TargetSmart’s young voter registration analysis found that youth voter registration and election turnout rates have increased nationwide.

“The state-by-state analysis shows that younger voters are poised to have an outsized impact in key battleground races,” the report states.

Election turnout for young voters rose by an average of four percent nationwide in the 2018 primary elections compared to 2014, according to TargetSmart. In North Carolina, youth voter registration was up by 8 points in 2018 compared to 2014. TargetSmart does not yet have the same data available from South Carolina.

In York County, the number of registered voters ages 18-24 increased from 2014 to 2016 but is down slightly in 2018, according to the S.C. State Election Commission. In 2014, 11,819 of the 148,567 registered voters were aged 18-24. That number jumped to 14,769 voters aged 18-24 out of 167,991 registered voters in York County.

Voter registration statewide has slightly decreased since the 2016 presidential election, numbers from the State Election Commission show.

Voter registration among people ages 25-44 follows a similar pattern from 2014 to 2018. In 2014, 52,903 of the 148,567 voters registered in York County fell into that age group. In 2016, there were 58,478 voters aged 25-44 out of 167,991 in the county. In 2018, the number is down slightly at 57,882 out of 171,232.

On the issues

Healthcare, climate change, taxes and women’s rights are among the reasons Winthrop University students are heading to the polls on Nov. 6.

Winthrop junior Brandon Johnson, 31, said he votes libertarian.

“I feel that gay rights are human rights, I feel that everybody has the right to self defense, I think the war on drugs has been an absolute complete failure for our country and has led to the mass incarceration of especially minorities and other groups,” he said.

Barber said the college Democrats are focused on getting Democrats elected. Barber said she supports James Smith for governor.

“How do we elect Democrats to be a check on Donald Trump?” she said. “The article of powers in Congress are not checking the president because he has a Congress of his own party that is pretty much falling in line behind him.”

Climate change, a woman’s right to choose and Medicaid expansion are also priorities for Barber.

Education is a top issue for Crunkilton, who switched from supporting the Republican Party in the primaries to Smith and the Democratic Party.

“I quit believing in the Republican I was working for and started learning more about James and fell in love with his vision for South Carolina,” Crunkilton said. “James really values education. (In South Carolina), we’re last in everything we should be first in and first in everything we should be last in.”

Audette said she is pro-life and supportive of tax cuts.

“Being a college student, I love every penny I can save, so any way we can not increase taxes is great,” she said. “The conservatives stand more for my point of view.”

Audette said she enjoys getting students involved in politics.

“College is a time for them to broaden their horizons,” she said. “I love being that younger voice for our party. The Republican Party, I think, they stand for all people. In school they like to push that as all whites ... but I think that we’ve become more open the past couple of years.”