What a waste of time passing the 26th Amendment to the Constitution. I strongly believe the voting age should be raised back to 21 years old, if only because state governments could save some money in printing cost and postage on the voting pamphlets.

In case some of you were not aware, we had an election last week. There were many issues like terror, the economy and the prospect of a military draft. Yet, even an issue like the draft did not bring out young voters in the numbers that a lot of people expected. Approximately 20 million 18- 29-year-olds voted in the presidential election. Yes, it was an increase of about 3 million from 2000, but still well below 50 percent of the total population of 50 million in the age group. Kerry won a majority of the youth vote and if 10 million more young people would have voted, it might have been President-elect Kerry.

I certainly was not disappointed with the outcome, but I am still disappointed with my age group. If you voted, then you should be proud. However, those of you who continue to sit at home when it is time to vote hurt the collective political power of young people, and it frustrates your peers who vote religiously.

I asked several students at Sac State who did not vote to tell me why. None of them would let me use their name for this article, but one said, “I did not register in time, but I do not think it would have made a difference.”

All the answers were basically the same, either they did not have time on Tuesday or believed it was a waste of time.

I asked James Shoch, assistant professor of government here at Sac State, what he thought about the youth turnout.

“If politics remains as highly charged as it is, I would expect youth turnout to remain comparable to this year’s levels,” he said.

In other words, we can continue to count on poor turnouts below 20 percent from young voters in elections. It is especially sad when voting is so easy and there is no good reason to be able to color in a few dots or touch a screen one day out of the year. This lack of participation leads to policies that do not address the issues of young people.

The California State University Board of Trustees voted to raise our tuition fees last week, too. There is not much students can do about that, but the governor might do the same thing in next year’s budget.

I am sure there will be a couple thousand young people who fuss about it and walk from campus to the Capitol in a show of solidarity like last year. However, lawmakers will know it is just a lot of noise from some kids cutting class and who will not vote when it counts.

I suppose there is a reason it is called “conventional wisdom” when everyone in politics says young people do not vote. Until young people can vote in the percentages that the older folks do, the policy makers will keep passing the buck.