No matter how you slice it, this election season is predicated on the promise of change. Change from partisanship, change from ?Old Washington,? change in the direction of policy at home and abroad. But at least one of these promises of change ? a perceived spike in youth voter participation and political engagement ? will likely bear no fruit.

Sure, the numbers were up in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries. Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee ? candidates who haunt most traditionally Democratic and Republican voters? dreams ? have managed to scrounge enough percentage points to be considered fairly serious candidates, due in large part to their popularity among young Americans.

And of course, there are the superstar candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. They have generated excitement and interest among young voters, if not simply for the prospect of electing the first black person to the presidency, then for the prospect of electing a ?liberal? to right the many wrongs of six years of unified government under George Bush.

So it might seem from all of the media hype and all of the talk of change being built from the bottom of the voting spectrum on up that candidates are finally addressing young voters in an effective manner. But I assure you there is still plenty of skepticism to go around, and the verdict on youth voter participation is still out.

Traditionally, the New Hampshire and Iowa primaries provide higher turnout of youths  ages 17-29 because of the ?retail politicking? that occurs in smaller states. Voter turnout is much higher when a candidate is at your doorstep and not just on your television screen.

But when Super Tuesday rolls around, with a full 24 states voting this primary season, youth voter participation almost always plummets. Candidates have neither the time nor the resources to campaign as personally with young voters as in Iowa or New Hampshire, and they focus their attention on the groups most likely to vote instead. The emphasis isn?t on getting out the vote ? youth or otherwise ? it?s on getting out your message to the most number of probable voters.

So if young voters are stimulated by the messages they have heard this year, we should see a reversal in the low youth voter numbers on Super Tuesday. But I wouldn?t hold my breath.

You see, with all of the talk of change in the right direction for this country, young Americans have no reason to believe they?re in the mix. Sure Barack Obama wants you to vote (specifically for him), but what policy initiatives has he pledged in return? A putrid tuition restraint plan that will barely have any impact on the average middle class college student?

And yes, Hillary Clinton really does care about youth voters, and I?m sure she would be glad to tell you about it in her unmistakably monotonic half-yell. But when she assumes the Oval Office in a year from now, do young Americans have any idea what she?ll do to address the decreasing availability of federal student loans for low-income students?

Politics is a strange beast, and for young Americans, even stranger. But their coalescence is vital to the health of this democracy. Too often the emphasis is on youth voter turnout every two years or every four years, when the real work must be done in the interim.

Voting should be a finality ? a concluding action in the aftermath of political activism. Yet political involvement among youth is at a low in this country, and candidates seem only to want our engagement when they need us on Election Day. Truly, the work of our elected officials is to engage younger and older citizens alike in their policy-making decisions and not just their campaign declarations.

Unfortunately, I don?t actually believe there will be profound change in Washington after these elections, not because Americans don?t want it, but because our founding fathers didn?t allow for much of it in our political system ? and rightly so. But what I do believe is that young Americans have the ability and the responsibility to enact change in the policy-making decisions after Election Day, when the real work of reform will begin.

It simply doesn?t matter much whether young people turn out to elect the next president, but it does matter whether young people engage whoever that person may be. I say this coming from a state whose young people once elected Jesse Ventura to the office of governor, only to see him bite the hand that fed him.

?I asked the Dalai Lama the most important question that I think you could ask ? if he had ever seen ‘Caddyshack,’? Ventura once said.

For Christ?s sake think before you vote, but more importantly, take action after you do.

Andy Granias ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in political science and legal studies.