Voter turnout in the United States presidential elections
Recent decades have seen increasing concern over the fact that youth voting turnout is consistently lower than turnout among older generations. Several programs to increase the rates of voting among young people—such as MTV's "Rock the Vote" (founded in 1990) and the "Vote or Die" initiative (starting in 2012)—may have marginally increased turnouts of those between the ages of 18 and 25 to vote. However, the "Stanford Social Innovation Review" found no evidence of a decline in youth voter turnout. In fact, they argue that "Millennials are turning out at similar rates to the previous two generations when they face their first elections."
Youth vote in the United States
In nine out of ten elections, the candidate who spends the most money is elected. The average cost of a successful campaign for the United States House of Representatives is nearly half a million dollars. A large portion of this money comes from "large individual contributions" – an average of 74 percent of the campaign funds raised in the 2012 presidential election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were large individual contributions. An average of 25 percent of presidential campaign funds in 2012 were made in "small individual contributions." The Supreme Court rulings on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010 and SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission allowed corporations and individuals to donate directly to political action committees (PACs), Super PACs, or 501(c)(4)s which could then spend unlimited amounts of money on campaigns of their own. The general perception of this system is that in turn for such large donations, candidates will vote in accordance to their large donors to ensure future donations during their reelection bid and pay the smaller donors slight attention. When the media reports that on campaign finance scandals, it is portrayed as a solitary incident with no connection to later policy outcomes. Americans have become so accustomed to the power of money in politics they are not surprised when a scandal occurs. The future for the influence of large donors is unlikely to change because the lawmakers with the power to create and pass campaign finance reform are those who benefit most from the large donations when their term is up and they must run reelection campaigns.