The Connection

On Tuesday, Nov. 10, Langley High School senior Swetha Ramesh traveled to Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. where she was invited to present her 501(c)(3) nonprofit SILVER (Students for Increased Legislation on Voter Engagement through Registration) as part of a panel discussion on millennial political engagement. The panel discussion was hosted by Harvard’s Community Action Committee (CAC) and was held on campus at the Kennedy School of Government. The panel members included Congressman Dennis Hertel (Ret., D-Mich.), Massachusetts State Senator Sal DiDomenico, (D-Suffolk, Middlesex), Dr. Wasif Syed (named as Huffington Post’s “top five people inspiring peace”), and Ramesh. “My aim in reaching out to Harvard was to drum up grassroots support for SILVER’s initiative. I had already presented SILVER to my history class at Langley and I wanted to see if I could take this one step further and reach out to universities,” said Ramesh.

SWETHA founded SILVER in July of 2015 along with students Camille Edwards from C.D. Hylton High School, Kathleen Lovain from T.C. Williams High School, Grace Blanchard from Highland High School and Mallory Williamson from Dominion High School in order to advocate for automatic voter registration with a driver’s license coupled with a lower pre-registration age. Ramesh attended the Virginia Governor’s School Program for the Humanities at Radford University over the summer and it was there that she first developed the idea for SILVER. “I took a class on political engagement and was surprised to learn exactly how bad political apathy has become today, especially among young people. I wanted to start SILVER to give millenials a way to become part of political conversation nationwide and to hopefully inspire young people to become more politically engaged in their own communities.” Since its founding SILVER has made significant progress in advocating for its initiatives. Virginia’s Democratic State Del. Kathleen Murphy (D-34) met with Ramesh about SILVER’s initiative and pledged her support for the idea. Ramesh was also able to discuss SILVER’s initiative on Capitol Hill with Congressman Jim McDermott, a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee and Congressman Don Beyer’s (Virginia’s 8th District) legislative aide, both of whom pledged their support for SILVER’s initiative as well. After this positive response from the legislators, Ramesh decided to see if she could start spreading the word about SILVER at universities. The panel discussion at Harvard was open to all students and Ramesh was able to discuss the issue of millennial voter engagement one-on-one with them. Some of the discussions included the possibility of incorporating political engagement into secondary school curriculum, reducing political disillusionment, and creating policies that would help make voter registration more secure. Ramesh had hoped to generate some ideas on how to mobilize young voters and found that the Harvard students had some insightful suggestions. “I really enjoyed the opportunity to talk to the students; they had some really innovative ideas on how to increase political engagement. I’ve definitely learned a lot from them and their ideas are helping shape my vision for SILVER’s future,” said Ramesh.

Currently both Oregon and California have adopted automatic voter registration and 17 other states have legislation pending on the topic, most of which has been introduced in the past year. In addition, 10 states have already enacted legislation allowing 16 and 17 year olds to pre-register to vote even if they will not be turning 18 by the next election year. However, SILVER’s proposal is the only one that combines both initiatives to specifically target young voters. “I think there’s still a lot of work to be done with regards to getting younger people to vote. Issues that concern millennials are often left out of political debates, and young people often just don’t feel that their vote counts. I’m hoping to change that with SILVER and show people that their opinion really can make a big difference.” In the future Ramesh hopes to continue to advocate for young people with SILVER as well as focus more on community-based events that encourage younger voters.

IN COLLEGE Ramesh hopes to pursue her interests in politics, business, and media arts, hoping to use these three areas of interest as platforms for social change. In addition to SILVER Ramesh is also the host of an international television show “Business World, Business Class” on Global Television Network, which reaches 2.5 million viewers. On the show she interviews successful business owners in order to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs.

More information on SILVER can be found at www.silvervoting.org.