For Stronger Democracy: Not Just Voters, but Deliberators

An Open Letter to DC Area 8th-12th Graders Participating in the First
Youth Summit on Youth Policymaking

On behalf of Learning Life, we’re glad you are planning to participate in the Youth Summit on Youth Policymaking (YSYP or Summit)!  We hope you have a calendar you check regularly, have marked the YSYP dates (Saturday, September 27, 1-3pm, and Saturday, October 4, 1:00-3:30pm as part of the DMV Democracy Festival) in your calendar, and followed the other onboarding steps at the Summit page at our website. This letter aims to explain why Learning Life is organizing the Summit. 

As you may have learned in school, politics in a democracy among other things involves elections and policymaking. Yet citizens commonly think of themselves as voters who elect their representatives, not as deliberators who help make policy.  Voting is for regular citizens, policy is for elected legislators, per common belief.  But there are at least four reasons to think this “I am a voter only” model of citizenship isn’t working so well.  

First, in almost all of the USA (except for Takoma Park, MD) and in most other countries, youth younger than 18 can’t vote, so they are effectively shut out from having a say in politics. This is a problem in part because if citizens don’t learn habits of political engagement (e.g., reading news, discussing politics, voting, donating and volunteering for issue and election campaigns, etc.) at a young age, they are less likely to be politically engaged in adulthood. 

Second, politicians pay closest attention to the wants and needs of those citizens who are politically engaged because those citizens vote them into office/power, and can vote them out of power. These most engaged citizens tend to have more education and income, so some policies politicians pass are more likely to meet the wants and needs of more privileged people, not everyone. 

Third, our media environment has changed significantly since the early 1900s, from most people having access to newspapers, then radio, then television, then cable TV, to now ever present computers and internet access via desktops, laptops, tablets and especially cell phones.  These changes have coincided with a long term decline in the percentage of citizens who pay attention to politics because citizens have gotten more and more choice in the media they consume, and when given a choice, more people opt for entertainment (sports, games, movies, shows, music, social media posts, etc) rather than political news.  This has made voting even more unequal, as the most privileged are more likely to consume the most news, while the majority consumes more entertainment.

Fourth, citizens usually vote for what they think will benefit either them individually or their families, with their material needs and wants foremost in mind.  Voters do not commonly consider the details of candidates’ policy proposals, let alone how those proposals might affect wider publics, near or far, especially people who are not like them. 

For these reasons, voting isn’t enough. Thus, the Youth Summit gets you practicing a different, deeper democracy role: not that of voters electing politicians, but rather young deliberators contributing to the policy making process.  Unlike voting, in the Summit deliberation process, you will (1) learn some things about policymaking and how policies affect young people, (2) meet with fellow citizens, (3) engage in guided group discussions, (4) hear and weigh diverse perspectives, needs and wants, not just the perspectives of those who are most privileged, (5) consider how young people 18 and under could be involved in policymaking at school, city, county and/or state levels (the large majority of democratic government in the USA is at these levels, not the national/federal level) in the DC region, then (6) propose and vote on your proposals for involving youth in policy making, with those policies getting the most votes shared out at public meetings following the Summit.  Along the way, you will be supported by volunteer policy mentors who have experience with policy making at school, city, county and/or state levels.  

As Summit students, by design, you come from diverse public, private and charter schools across the DC metropolitan region. You also come with different levels of interest in and knowledge about politics. Some of you may already know that you want to pursue politics as a career, while others among you may want little or nothing to do with politics. But whether we like politics or not, we cannot escape it because the policies our elected officials pass affect the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the homes we live in, the way we get to work, school and fun, as well as the quality of our schools, work, retirement, and else.  It’s up to us as citizens to make sure government policies serve the widest public interest, not just a powerful few.  Voting regularly is one important way to make government policies accountable to the widest public, but so is diverse citizens contributing to policy deliberations.  

Learning Life’s hope is to make YSYP an annual event that brings young people the Washington, DC region together – across lines of class, race, religion, and other divides – to learn, deliberate, and propose policies on issues that affect youth, with preparation via school classes and/or extracurriculars, plus, in the long term, opportunities for youth to help implement and evaluate these policies with the support of schools, governments, nonprofits, foundations and businesses. Thus, in the short and/or long-term, regular, community-supported YSYPs should help: 

  1. Bridge social divides between DC area youth, and between youth and governments.
  2. Engage more diverse young people in the DMV as connected, capable and caring citizens.
  3. Increase youth influence on policymaking, thus improving government accountability to youth. 
  4. Strengthen regional employment pipelines for the benefit of youth and employers.
  5. Cultivate greater public trust in government.  

You are the first cohort of YSYP youth deliberators!  We hope you will be engaged throughout, from preliminary communications on Linkedin, to the September 27 and October 4 meetings this year, to post-Summit presentations of YSYP deliberations and more.  

Don’t hesitate to reach out at email@learninglife.info should you have any questions.  

I look forward to meeting you online on September 27, and in person on October 4!  

Paul Lachelier, Ph.D. 
Founder & Director
Learning Life