Opinion | Generation Z faces criticism at the ballot box this midterm election

Politician Brigitte Gabriel claims Generation Z is destroying the country at the ballot box. In actuality, Gen Z is advocating the social justice and individual liberty of groups many conservatives seek to repress. UNSPLASH

Americans aged 18 to 29 only make up approximately 12% of voters, but the majority of them vote for Democratic candidates. Seeing these statistics, some conservative politicians and critics have started questioning the legitimacy of the votes from Generation Z.

According to a recent set of tweets on Nov. 9 from conservative author and anti-Islam activist Brigitte Gabriel, she believes that “Generation Z is destroying the country at the ballot box” and due to “a person’s brain doesn’t develop until they are about 25 years old” the voting age should be increased. Another tweet claimed, “That’s why the vast majority of Generation Z are Democrats.”

Hannah Smith, news and politics staff writer

However, this claim couldn’t be more baseless.

Interestingly enough, Founding Father Alexander Hamilton — selected delegate to the Confederation Congress in 1782 — began to advocate the ratification of the Constitution, a document governing our entire current political system, at only 25 years old. 

Is Hamilton considered “less intelligent” for being young, even if he was a founder of the U.S.’ political system? 

Gabriel’s tweets make two jabbing assumptions: that not only are Democrats less intelligent than those of the Republican Party but that Gen Z-ers are less intelligent than preceding generations. 

A common misconception political figures like Gabriel share is that with age comes wisdom. Americans so often think of the founders as wise — and like Gen Z, the founders were wise, but not old. 

Gen Z is voting at a time of pandemics, police violence, attacks on women’s reproductive health care, LGBTQ+ rights and frequent school shootings. Gabriel claims that most Gen Z voters register as Democrats due to a supposed lack of intelligence and brain development. 

The truth: Gen Z chooses Democrat affiliation, not from lack of intelligence, but to stray away from the conservatism now suffocating the liberty of many across the U.S. 

According to Insider Intelligence, Gen Z considers itself more accepting and open-minded than any generation before it. Almost half of Gen Z are minorities, compared to 22% of Baby Boomers. The majority of Gen Z support social movements such as Black Lives Matter, transgender rights and feminism. 

The only way for Gen Z to maintain this humanitarian and social justice fervor is by voting to fight the conservative court majority, who are stripping away human rights across the country. 

In today’s day and age, the Republican political party is accompanied by intensive ideological conservatism, especially after the presidency of Donald Trump, who strongly linked his Republican supporters to their conservative ideals. 

The rise of conservatism in the U.S. since Trump has only led to an insatiable pursuit to control individual rights like women’s reproductive health and transgender health care. In a predominantly red state like Alabama, any doctor that has prescribed puberty blockers or hormone therapy to people under the age of 18 could face felony charges, and attempting an abortion is charged as a Class C felony.

Since the 1960s, Congress and the federal courts have acted mostly to strengthen the basic civil rights available to citizens in all 50 states, a pattern visible from the dismantling of Jim Crow’s racial segregation to the right to abortion to the legalization of same-sex marriage. 

Now, offensives by red-state governments and GOP-appointed federal judges are poised to retract that slow build of freedom from the ground up. If voters don’t stop them, these anti-freedom fighters could create a dramatic erosion of common national rights, and a gulf between the liberties of Americans in blue states, and those in red states.

Perhaps Gen Z is choosing the Democratic Party because its political leaders are choosing not to annihilate the rights that generations before have so fervently fought for. Perhaps Gen Z isn’t driven by political party affiliation at all, but by a deep desire to move forward, instead of backward, in the American timeline of individual liberty. 

Do you, Gabriel, once again want a society of “Mom and Apple Pie?” Do you truly desire the suffocation of liberty for women and the LGBTQ+ community? 

Gen Z does not lack intelligence. They have what conservative Republicans across the U.S. fear most: guts, grit, open minds and a wildfire of untamed activism. That is what Gen Z brings to the ballots this year.