Oct 4, 2018 3 min read

Over the past few years, Washington and Greene counties have experienced several elections that produced razor-thin victories.

In 2015, Washington County Commissioner Harlan Shober eked out a 35-vote victory against Republican challenger Mike McCormick in a race in which 42,000 ballots were cast.

It happened again two years later when longtime Greene County Coroner Gregory Rohanna lost a fiercely contested race against Gene Rush by just four votes after all 7,000 votes were counted.

Then maybe the greatest example of how “every vote counts” was illustrated in the 18th Congressional District’s special election between Democrat Conor Lamb and Republican Rick Saccone that garnered the national spotlight. Lamb won by just 627 votes in a district where nearly a quarter-million people turned out to vote in that March 13 special election.

So, people in Western Pennsylvania are keenly aware of the power a single vote can have on each race, both big and small.

But one voting bloc that has notoriously shunned elections is that of young adults, especially millennials.

While some people still view millennials as kids, that viewpoint couldn’t be further from the truth since the generation is generally defined as people who were born between 1981 and 1997. People in this generation are ages 21 to 37, which means they’re a large swath of voters who have families, homes and jobs. To put it bluntly, they’re not living in mom’s basement anymore.

They’re also now the largest generation in the country, after passing baby boomers this year, according to multiple studies. That means they could wield the most power in elections, if they choose to do so. Unfortunately, they have declined to participate in the political process like older generations.

Could that be changing with the upcoming midterm election less than five weeks away?

That remains to be seen, although there are some encouraging signs on the campuses of Washington & Jefferson College and Waynesburg University. Those students, who straddle the generational line between millennials and the generically named Generation Z, have expressed great interest in the political process. Various student-run groups are organizing at W&J while Waynesburg held a “Midterm Madness” discussion last week.

The question now is whether either Democrats or Republicans can harness their political willpower to encourage young adults to vote for their side. In the 2012 presidential election, 69.7 percent of adults 65 and older cast ballots, while just 38 percent of people 18 to 24 voted. That latter percentage must increase immediately if younger voters want to have a say in the future of their country, state, county, community and school district.

While there have been many rallies organized by young people over the past two years – whether it involved firearms, women’s rights or environmental concerns – they won’t mean a thing if the largest generation living in America today doesn’t come out to vote Nov. 6 to counterbalance the perennially strong turnout by older voters.

Millennials and boomers have two vastly different visions for our country. Those who show up at the polls next month will have a say in which path we follow.