Duke (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair). And Go See Hair.

I come from a country where voter abstention among 16- and 17-year-olds, who aren’t even required to vote, was just 12.7% in our most recent election. In the October 25 runoff, 128 million Brazilians came together on a single election day to celebrate their constitutional right to go to the polls and choose our future. However, after last Tuesday’s midterm elections, on November 3, I came back to a USAFacts article explaining that fewer than 30% of Americans aged 18 to 24 voted in the 2022 midterms. When I discovered that, I simply couldn’t understand it.

During my first few weeks at Duke, one particular question kept coming up in my FOCUS discussion classes: Is American democracy declining? An overwhelming majority of my classmates, particularly American students, seemed to agree with this idea. A common pattern emerged in their comments. They would first point to the rise of immigration-related issues, foreign wars, excessive government spending, and a long list of other concerns that crossed both Democratic and Republican administrations.

I grew up in Brazil. Although my country is relatively peaceful when it comes to civil liberties, I wouldn’t classify it as the world’s best example of democracy. How could America, the land of liberty, have such a different level of political participation than the country I am from? While younger Brazilians were showing up at the polls in growing numbers, why don’t I see a bigger, younger political wave in America?