To my fellow young people (18-29), I apologize

I'm a liberal, and by nature, when I find out that when I'm wrong, I apologize.

Ok, so the numbers coming out showed that 18-29 year-olds made up 17% of the electorate this time around. This was the same portion of the electorate we took in 2000. Looks like no change, on the surface, but we also have to think about "17% of what number". Voting was at record levels this year. As such, for all you math geeks out there, 17% of 100 million is smaller than 17% of the estimated 120 million that showed up to vote this time around.

Within our age group, voting was up from 42% in 2000 to 51% of all the 18-29 year olds of all the eligible voters in the nation. In battleground states, it was up to 64%.

While these are much more encouraging numbers about our turnout, it's still not good enough.
Lemme give you an analogy you'll understand. If you got 51% on a test, you would fail the test. If you got a 64% on a test, you'd be in the D grade range. The take home message here is that while we're doing good, we need to do much better. Engage your friends on the issues, make the issues not about policy for one party or another, but make the issues about how it effects them as individuals. If you divorce the issue from the party and make it a human issue, then everyone gets to participate, not just the fancy pants elitists.