In 2016—a pivotal election year that saw Donald Trump ascend to the presidency—only 39 percent of eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 21 voted in the presidential election. The Young Vote, a documentary film by Diane Robinson ’91, follows a group of students and activists in an effort to understand young people’s perceptions of voting and civic engagement.
“I didn’t buy the narrative that was going around after the 2016 election—that young people didn’t care and that’s why they didn’t turn out to vote in larger numbers,” said Robinson. The former educator, who had had leadership roles at Teach For America and Teach For All, said, “At that point, I had spent decades working with young people in education. I had recruited many of them to do some of the hardest jobs as teachers and leaders in education. So, I knew there was another story to tell.”
Her documentary, The Young Vote, follows a group of five student activists during the 2020 election to understand the issues that keep young people away from the polls. Among them are a two-party system that shuts out participation by independents, a tendency to emphasize activism in response to social justice and civic issues, and distrust of a system they see as rigged by practices such as gerrymandering and rulings like Citizens United, which allowed corporations and other entities to have a greater influence in elections.
The activists include Sophia, who has led get-out-the-vote campaigns in Georgia and around the country; Ariana, who focuses on activism as a route to political power; Liz, a DACA immigrant and organizer, who leads efforts to get first-time Latino voters to the polls; and high-schoolers Elena and Dariel, who promoted a Florida amendment that would have allowed open elections, enabling voters to cast ballots for candidates regardless of party.
During a post-screening discussion Robinson spoke with Sidney Plotkin, her former professor of political science, and Yael Zarrini ’25, an organizer with the student org Vassar Votes. Robinson encouraged students to become more active in local elections, as “they often make a bigger difference than national politics.” And Plotkin noted that in 2020 a quarter of the U.S. electorate was over 65. People my age are getting louder voices as a result.” The Young Vote showcases a myriad of possibilities for youth who wish to access their power.
Robinson says she was impressed by her young subjects, whom she sees as “actively shaping our democracy and protecting it. They are pushing back on political structures in this country that don’t work for all its people anymore and they are changing them. ... I think it’s the younger generation in many ways that are saying, ‘Enough!’ and are leading the change we need in this country right now.”
Robinson says she hopes her film will serve as a teaching tool, now that it has found an educational distributor who can get the documentary to middle schools, high schools, and colleges. Vassar has licensed the film for use by its educators.
Robinson says she’s lucky she went to Vassar, where she made lifelong friends such as Natalie Nixon ’91, who became one of the executive producers on the film. “When I decided to make a career pivot from education to filmmaking, my Vassar friends and community were among the first people that I told—especially because so many of them work in the world of film. They were encouraging and just all around supportive. I couldn’t have made The Young Vote without them.”—Elizabeth Randolph