Welcome to our Youth Column where we ask young people to share their perspectives on pressing issues and propose innovative solutions. Our first installation we’re asking young people: What is the number one thing that you would want the next president or Congress to do that would impact your life? How could a presidential or Congressional campaign earn your vote?

Check out what people had to say below. 

The office of the President of the United States holds immense power and responsibility. It’s a position that demands experience and dedication to enacting real solutions to the problems faced by the American people, usually by working closely with Congress. It’s important to focus on the substantial changes that a president and Congress can make—changes that can affect generations.

Examples of what presidents and Congress can do are plentiful! President Clinton worked with Congress to implement targeted tax cuts like the Earned Income Tax Credit expansion, which made a big dent in poverty. President Obama worked with Congress to enact the Affordable Care Act, which expanded access to health care. President Biden also worked with Congress to pass an infrastructure bill that included historic investments in climate change. The next president and Congress could continue progressing on these issues, advocating for higher minimum wage summer jobs or making big changes to how we keep our communities safe. All things that would have an immediate impact on the lives of millions of people

• Jeremy M,  23, Texas 
  • I would like to see Harris-Watlz sit down, as promised, with activists to negotiate an arms embargo to Isreal. Young voters like me love Kamala Harris. We just feel icky and cannot move forward with voting for her until she sets an arms embargo. Ethan
• Ethan S, 18, Michigan
  • The American’s individual vote is both the most crucial and the least significant factor in a nation-wide election. I often fall victim, as many others do, to not believing my vote will change anything. What makes a vote matter is the collective agreement to make it so. With this in mind, to win my vote, a candidate must have the ability to speak truth into our political systems which have devolved into cesspools of lies and a race for popularity. The president must be comebody who is resilient in their values, even if I do not fully agree with them. Acting as an ideological chameleon is not worthy of victory. This kind of person will be able to show the masses that voting does matter, and will revitalise a currently apathetic attitude towards government. To articulate on actions and policy, the president must be able to understand pressing global matters as well as smaller conflicts, and address them with the intention of reaching a compromise, not for one side to win over another in the petty tug-of-war which achieves nothing. When all parties can walk away from a conflict feeling as if they were heard and played an important role in the solution, that is when you truly make progress. And it is progress that is resilient against the turbulence of a country filled with so many kinds of people. The president muust be able to support laws, other federal enforcements, or changes while keeping America in mind, not just their party.  
• Royal D, 20, Minnesota 
  • I would like the U.S. to stop its involvement in the genocide in Palestine. Turn more of our focus on the people here. We should be able to take care of homelessness, food insecurity; we should be able to end these things if we are to consider ourselves the number one country. Wages, affordable housing, access to clean water I want all of that if I’m going to vote for someone.