The following is the winning essay of the annual High School Essay Contest sponsored by the Association of Supreme Court Justices. The contest is open to high school students in 10th, 11th and 12th grades throughout New York City. The 2014 winner and nine finalists, who wrote on “American Democracy and the Rule of Law: Why Every Vote Matters,” will have the opportunity to intern in the state court system for one week in the summer, and were awarded gift certificates from the New York Law Journal.
“Should things go wrong at any time, the people will set them to rights by the peaceable exercise of their elective rights.”
— Thomas Jefferson
As nations around the world struggle for democratic rights against oppressive governments, citizens of the United States seem to grow increasingly skeptical of their roles in a democratic society. In 2012, only 50 percent of voters in the 18-to-29 age group actually voted, amounting to only 19 percent of the total votes cast that year.1 As a young person myself, I must admit that I wasn’t interested in voting either until I took a government class. It is the dangerous combination of the current youth culture and the widespread disillusionment with government that has turned many young Americans away from voting.
