“The Millennial generation continues to grow as young immigrants expand their ranks. Boomers – a generation defined by the boom in U.S. births following World War II — are older and shrinking in size as the number of deaths exceed the number of older immigrants arriving in the country.”

– Richard Fry, Pew Research Center

What does this mean for voting?

In 2012, Baby Boomers accounted for 36 percent of the electorate. They consistently vote in large numbers. But as Boomers continue to shrink in size, will Millennials take the reigns?

According to a 2015 Boston Globe article, that does not appear to be the case. Less than 20 percent of 18-29 year olds voted in the 2014 midterm election. Millennials simply do not believe that exercising their vote is an effective medium for change.

“How did we get from fighting for the vote to dismissing it as meaningless?”

– Joanna Weiss, Boston Globe

It is not that Millennials don’t care about societal issues. In fact, they are more educated and more inclined to volunteer than previous generations. At Follow My Vote, we believe that we have found a way to boost Millennial participation and confidence in the voting process that will more accurately reflect their volunteerism. Millennials are disenfranchised with the traditional two-party system. By moving the election online, the platform allows third-party candidates to have a greater voice. Further, Millennials will already be more willing to participate because of their familiarity with the technology that accompanies an online election. Making the election blockhain-based assures citizens that their votes were counted correctly with end-to-end verifiability. Lastly, by making the vote trackable in real-time, elections will be much more exciting and dynamic.

At Follow My Vote, we envision an open source, end-to-end verifiable voting system. Vote where you count, and sign up below for the 2016 Parallel Presidential Election. Help us make history in 2016.

About the author: Tyler Molihan is a Marketing Intern at Follow My Vote. He hopes to increase awareness about the benefits of online voting systems.

The post Millennial Generation Continues to Grow, While Their Voter Participation Remains Stagnant appeared first on Follow My Vote.

If you don’t know what Snapchat is don’t worry. It is a fairly new smartphone app that lets users send messages and images to one another. The unique part is that the message gets deleted after being viewed.

One feature that has been added to Snapchat is called “stories”. You can choose to send a message to one friend or you can opt to make the message your story. This means all of your friends will be able to view this message for the next 24 hours.

Recently, Snapchat has been producing stories of their own called “Our Stories”.  These are essentially a culmination of pictures and videos from all the people at one event. Users of the app submit their picture or video to the event story. The event could be a holiday, concert or even a snowstorm. The Snowmageddon snow storm of 2015 story reportedly got 27 million views on the app.

We were extremely exited to see a Snapchat election story for the UK election. Hundreds of people had submitted photos and videos of their voting experiences. Young voters got to share their first voting experience with the world, while others simply encouraged people to get out and vote. Either way this was an awesome use of technology to support democracy.

We also really liked the fact that the app stayed non-partisan. There was only one story topic and the submitted media was from voters. There were no advertisements or stories dedicated to a certain party. Below is one of the pictures we managed to snag from the Snapchat election story.

The post Snapchat Election Story In The UK appeared first on Follow My Vote.