News : Young people urged to register to vote: “This is your super power – don’t let them take it away”

Andrew Trendell June 19, 2024

As the deadline draws close to people in the UK to register to vote today (June 18), a campaign that unites bodies from the music industry have spoken to NME about why getting young people engaged matters.

Just Vote recently launched their Crash The Party campaign, encouraging people aged 18-34 to step up and make their voices heard. They’ve also enlisted over “50 music industry” including artists, record labels and festivals to help spread the message – with the added opportunity of being able to win tickets to Glastonbury and Reading & Leeds.

Ahead of the UK’s General Election on July 4, people have until 11.59pm tonight to register to be eligible to vote. You can register to vote here.

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of @JustVote24, a campaign dedicated to empowering 1 million young people to register to vote.

4th July will be the most important general election of our lifetimes. We’re at a historic point, with the opportunity for a profound change of… pic.twitter.com/V1vWgkw7sA

— JustVote24 (@justvote24) June 3, 2024

The campaign is the brainchild of entrepreneur and environmentalist Dale Vince OBE, who told NME about how important music was to politics as it had “changed the way he saw the world” when going to gigs and festivals a teenager.

“The idea was to reach out to people through festivals, through live music events, through musicians and artists to spread the word to young people that they actually have a superpower,” said Vince. “It only comes around once every four years, and it’s going to be the hardest it’s ever been to exercise it.

“This government is trying to stop young people from voting, so just don’t let them.”

Vince also argued that through new voter ID legislation, the government was attempting to silence young people.

“The government brought in the need to have photographic ID there when you vote, and they did that off the back of six cases of voting fraud over the last five years – that’s in a country of over 60million people,” he said.

“The pre-text of it was bogus. There is no fraud worth even talking about. The first bi-election fought under this new legislation saw 3,000 people disenfranchised and turned away at the voting booth because they didn’t have the required photo ID.”

Today is the final day to register to vote in the general election on July 4.

Please visit https://t.co/WkVoc71ewd to make sure you can vote before 11:59pm tonight, and have your say in our future. pic.twitter.com/TBLNfsSElR

— Glastonbury Festival (@glastonbury) June 18, 2024

Many believe that the legislation favours older people by allowing things like bus passes to count as ID, while student union cards won’t qualify. “It’s deliberately aimed at young people that don’t tend to vote Tory,” said Vince – who explained why this is the most high stakes election on record for the younger generations.

“This is the most important election of our lifetime,” he said. “There will be 3million first-time voters at this election aged post-18 at their first election, and they have the most skin in the game.

“The climate crisis is the big thing that we’re facing, we’re halfway through the last decade that the UN said we had in which to act, we’ve got five years left. Young people are going to live with the consequences of the climate crisis. It will define their lives more than any other generation, and they will find it the hardest to have their say in this election. There’s some kind of super-dark irony in that.”