At the age of sixteen you’re legally old enough to drive, drop out of school, get a job and become emancipated. It’s supposed to be right smack dab in the middle of the best years of your life. Yet we still can’t vote, it’s another two, long, grueling years until we can. At eighteen it is deemed that you are an adult, legally responsible enough to cast your vote. As high school students we aren’t old enough to vote until our senior year but does that really mean we can’t start to doggy paddle in the sea of politics now?

High school students are a large influence in today’s political process. For the upcoming election the youth vote is being eagerly sought after. Young adults vote in huge numbers which was evident in the 2000 presidential election when the almost 18 million 18-30 year-olds were 16 percent of total actual voters. There are major incentives for young adults to vote, including the failing public school systems, job concerns, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq waged by soldiers in the same age block. But it is often hard to reach these voters and to end the apathy among them. This is where teenagers come in. Adults are often impressed and encouraged to see these students out working for causes they believe in.

Andrew Reder, a senior at Lincoln High School believes that his age group votes the least and therefore needs the most work for this Presidential election. “They respond best to volunteers of their own age,” he says. “The more of us out there working, hopefully the more will vote in November.”

“This is a very crucial election that will affect us later on in life, when we can in fact vote and are getting jobs and having more responsibilities that are affected by the decisions the government and administration makes,” says Alex Byers, an incoming senior at Lincoln High School. She has been doing voter registration with America Votes in her neighborhood as well as an internship with the Oregon Bus Project. “Voting is something that is an undenied right that people take for granted.”

While most high school students cannot vote they are still taking active parts in changing the world. Groups such as the League of Conservation Voters (www.lcv.org/), The Oregon Bus Project (www.busproject.org), NARAL (www.prochoiceoregon.org), Basic Rights Oregon (www.basicrights.org), Rock the Vote (www.rockthevote.com and www.benjerry.com), the Sierra Club (www.sierraclub.org), America Votes (www.americavotes.org), Young Voters Alliance (www.youngvoteralliance.org/), 21st Century Democrats (www.21stcenturydems.org) and ACORN (www.acorn.org) among many others are working to get young people out in the streets. With programs focusing on voter registration these groups are eager to have teenagers volunteering because of the energy they bring to any campaign. For whatever issue touches the heart of your local teenager, whether it’s the right to choose, the environment, economic or social justice there is a program out there to make sure the right candidate who will make the difference is elected. There are also many active students working on the campaigns of John Kerry, Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich.

To Andrew Simon, an incoming junior at Sunset High School, having students who can’t vote getting involved in the election is extremely important. He believes in getting involved in politics especially in campaigns and organizations that work towards your beliefs and ideas. Andrew himself is keeping busy this summer as an editorial intern with Zephyr, the progressive magazine, and doing press with the Bus Project.

Many of the organizations that offer and encourage opportunities for high school students provide a place for leadership to grow as well as the progressive beliefs of the volunteers to come to light and change the community. When working with organizations they provide an insight that many adults cannot, often bringing a new and more creative way of accomplishing the purpose to the table. “High School students care,” says Jennifer Yocom of The Bus Project, “often with a purity and passion that some of us older folks lose…they probably inspire us more than we them.”

Lila Zucker is a writer, Radical Cheerleader and student at Lincoln High School in Portland.