A fluke or a trend? A paper in San Diego has a great story about how the surging interest in politics among younger adults may be the reversal of a long-term trend, and not just a temporary blip (as in 1992, when youth voting also surged). What do you think?

A great editorial correcting the record on the youth vote from 2004. A quick job for you that would make a real difference: send a letter to the editor of your local paper pointing out that new census data proves young people voted in record numbers in 2004.

Check out Student Debt Alert.org for the student debt "facebook" and other funs ways to highlight the hard times and help build pressure for change.

"Young voters led surge in 2004 election": The Associated Press has done a great story, by one of their top writers, Ron Fournier, about how young people turned out to vote in droves in 2004.

The story notes,

WASHINGTON -- Turns out, the kids rocked after all. Nearly half of all eligible young voters cast ballots in the November 2004 election, raising their turnout rate by more than twice any other age group. ...

About 47 percent of Americans 18-24 voted in 2004, up from 36 percent in 2000, according to the Census Bureau. No other age group increased its turnout by more than 5 percentage points.

As we chronicled in our post-election wrap-up, young people voted big time but the press messed up the story by mis-reading and then distorting the numbers.

So here's what you should do about it: ask everyone you know whether they think young people voted or not in 2004. You'll find a lot of people are still operating on the false-impression that we never turned out. Tell them the truth!

This is so important because if young people believe that all of that excitement and peer-to-peer engagement in 2004 was phony because nobody actually voted, it could have a devastating effect on future mobilization efforts.

You might have seen a pessimistic article in the Roanake Times about the impact of young voters in Virginia. The New Voters Project is sharing this response to that article.

In 2005 the Youth Vote in Virginia Continued the Upward Trend Begun During the High Profile 2004 Election

Last Thursday (11/10/05), Greg Esposito’s piece in the Roanoke Times, “Young Voters Impact Unclear,” noted that there was a small decrease in the percentage of registered voter turnout in precincts with a high youth population in Montgomery County and Radford City. However, in those same precincts, we know that the number of votes cast rose by 15 percent over the 2001 gubernatorial election, according to an analysis of raw turnout data by the Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project and the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). According to Mark Hugo Lopez, the Research Director at CIRCLE, “this is a better measure of turnout than the statistic Esposito cites, and it reflects a solid increase in voter participation over 2001.”

It’s likely that the decline in the voter turnout rate among registered voters fell because of the lingering effects of the 2004 election on voter registration rolls. Since Montgomery County and Radford City saw a rise in the number of registered voters in anticipation of the 2004 Presidential Election, it’s likely that in 2005 the Radford and Montgomery voter rolls carried people who are no longer living (or voting) in those counties – otherwise known as “deadwood” in political speak – but have not yet been purged from the rolls. The existence of more registered voters on the registration roll who did not vote in 2005 relative to 2001 may have lead to a dilution of the actual registered voter turnout rate, even though the number of votes cast in these precincts increased significantly over the 2001 gubernatorial election.

Here’s the bottom line: more young Virginians participated in the 2005 gubernatorial election than in 2001. The PIRG New Voters Project registered 7,000 young voters, assisted thousands more in voting by absentee ballot, and made more than 30,000 personalized get-out-the-vote contacts in the days leading up to Election Day. In the 13 precincts in which we believed there to high percentage of youth voters, the numbers of votes cast increased by as much as 61.9% in one precinct, and by an average of 15.1% overall - the increased in the number of votes cast is undeniable.

A great piece about the real Rosa Parks: Josh Eidelson writes for Campus Progress about "the 50-year-old myth that Parks was an apolitical woman who one day ambled into history out of simple physical exhaustion and then promptly ambled back out of it again. Such a myth only encourages needless knee-jerk skepticism of contemporary activists who are public about strong political convictions, work through political organizations, and formulate careful media strategies – all of which describe the real Rosa Parks, not the Rosa Parks most Americans remember."

More on the 18 year old phenom mayor-elect from Michigan: USA Today covers his race, noting that "Sessions, who turned 18 on Sept. 22, ran as a write-in candidate because he was too young to get on the ballot in the spring. The young politician used $700 from a summer job to fund his door-to-door campaign in Hillsdale, Mich., a town of about 9,000."

And the follow up from Hillsdale.net: Sessions wins by just two votes! The elections officials hand-reviewed the ballots to determine the intent of every voter, including people who may have not indicated properly through filling out the bubble who they wanted to be mayor. For example, "Among the variations of spellings, the board decided that one person who wrote in “18–year–old high school student,” did intend to vote for Sessions, but that a voter who wrote in “anybody else,” did not."

Thanks to CNN's Morning Grind for following the story.

Not another teen mayor!

All the cool kids are doing it. This one is from Linesville, PA, as reported by Eric Reinagel for the Meadville Tribune.

More from Virginia from the New Voters Project and CIRCLE. The data isn't up on the web yet but here's info from the press release...

 
YOUTH VOTER TURNOUT IN VIRGINA CONTINUES UPWARD TREND
2005 Youth Voter Turnout Increases by an Average of 15 percent over 2001 in Targeted Precincts
 
Youth voter turnout in the 2005 Virginia Gubernatorial Election increased by an average of 15.1 percent over the 2001 election in targeted youth precincts, according to an Election Night analysis by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at the University of Maryland. This rise continues the national trend begun during the high-profile 2004 election when the number of votes cast by 18 to 24 year olds increased by 35 percent over the 2000 election.
 
“The youth vote is up, again,” said Karl Bach, a student senator at George Mason University.  “We care, we’re engaged and we’re voting.” 
 
Youth voter turnout surged in the 2004 election with the 18 to 24 year old turnout rate increasing by 11 percentage points over the 2000 election, as compared to an increase of only four percentage points among the general population. 
 
The 2005 analysis focused on 13 precincts with a relatively high concentration of college students that were the focus of non-partisan Get-Out-the-Vote efforts of the Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project.  The analysis compared voter turnout numbers from the 2001 Gubernatorial Election with Tuesday’s turnout numbers and found that voter turnout increased by an average of 15.1% among the precincts studied and, in one precinct, by as much as 61.9% over the 2001 election.  A table detailing the analysis is below.
 
The Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project, a non-partisan effort, made more than 30,000 personalized Get-Out-The-Vote contacts in the week before the November 8th election and registered 7,000 young people before the registration deadline in October.
 
“The reason I chose to work on this project was to get more of my fellow students to vote so that politicians start paying attention to us,” said Lacey McLear, President of the Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project at Virginia Commonwealth University.  “I’m incredibly gratified to see that our work paid off.”
 
“Tabling events, phone banks, ‘dorm-storming’ and door-to-door canvassing, were non-stop on campuses across Virginia,” said Ben Unger, the PIRG New Voters Project field director. “We had personal conversations with tens of thousands of registered young people, reminding them to vote and encouraging them to have a say in our democracy. Our aim was simple: for more young people to vote.  Their choice in the ballot box was their own business.” 
 
The PIRG New Voters Project prioritized making personalized peer-to-peer contacts, the strategy thought to be the most effective way to mobilize young voters.
 
[More on the web soon...]

Fight Mannequism?

Youth voter turnout up in Virginia...

NPR is reporting that youth turnout (18-24 year olds) was up sharply in Virginia... more info when we get it...

An 18 year old mayor!

HILLSDALE -- Michael Sessions' political career had an inauspicious start: When he ran for student council this year, he lost.
Now he's about to be mayor.

Sessions, an 18-year-old high school student, won a long-shot write-in campaign this week to oust Hillsdale's 51-year-old mayor.

"I just thought I'd give it a shot," Sessions said with a smile. "I hoped I'd win. But I didn't really know what would happen."

Read the rest of the article here.

There is a whole lot of election news out there, so here's just one tidbit related to younger voters: the re-election of Detroit's Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Its quite an upset since Kilpatrick's opponent, Hendrix, was supposedly leading by large margins in the polls.

Hendrix, according to Tuesday's poll results, had a strong showing among absentee voters, as well as whites and people older than 40. Kilpatrick's strength came from younger voters, the poll found. He also was favored by black voters.

The mayor's youth -- he became Detroit's youngest elected mayor at 31 -- also seemed to be a factor in his surge. Supporters and voters said his mistakes were the result of inexperience and were not worth turning Kilpatrick out.

We love you, too!

This note came in to our website and we thought we'd share.


To Whom it May Concern,

I'm sure the marketing alias isn't the right place to send this but it was the first email alias listed. Let me begin by saying, I'm not the kind of person to write feedback email. I've got to be pretty darn appreciative to make the effort, but the hard working folks at Rock the Vote deserve it.

I won't give you my resume, but I went to one of the top colleges in the nation and work for a very prestigious corporation. I consider myself to be a pretty smart cookie. Nonetheless, I am totally clueless when it comes to finding voter information. Your organization helped me to register to vote when I lived in New York during the last presidential election, but I have to admit that I had forgotten all about you guys right afterwards. I recently moved to California and did the responsible thing and registered to vote when I got my California drivers license. I've been bombarded with political advertisements for California's special election next week. The commercials have been so slanted that I didn't feel I had a good handle on both sides of the issues, so I went online in search of information, I listened to snippets on NPR on the issues, and I looked through the local newspaper. In total, I probably spent a good 4 hours looking for an unbiased, well put together source that clearly lays out all of the issues. And ya know what? I couldn't find anything!!! I was starting to get really pessimistic and decided that if I wasn't smart enough to read up on the facts I probably should only vote on the issues I understood and just wing the rest. But this decision made me feel really guilty. And then, today, comes your email from Rock the Vote. So I went to your site, and there it was, the holy grail of voter information, clearly laid out and easy to read with multiple links and detailed information. All I have to say is THANK YOU! This is exactly what I was looking for and I am going to encourage everyone I know to go to your site and educate themselves on the upcoming election. I think Rock the Vote is a fantastic organization and I wish you nothing but the best. Thank you again for all of your hard work!

Gratefully,
M.C.
[Name withheld to protect privacy]

Student Voting Rights Is Still A Problem

In 2004, Rock the Vote's work highlighting the problem of student voter rights brought national attention to a problem that many have brushed under the rug for a long time. Working with a broad coalition of groups including the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, Student Voting Rights Campaign, New Voters Project, ACLU and many others, Rock the Vote put the issue of student voting rights on the map.

While we are confident that our preventative measures helped prepare students to protect their own rights, we can't claim to have solved the problem in each locality. And unfortunately, the issue isn't going away.

This just in from the Student Voting Rights Campaign on the Virginia elections:

Over one thousand students attempting to participate in Virginia’s gubernatorial race have faced obstacles or outright denials as they attempt to register to vote in their college towns. The problems surfaced when organizers for the New Voters Project, a non-partisan organization with the goal of engaging young people politically, turned in registration applications for students across the state. At Radford University, where nearly 700 students filled out registration applications, the local registrar responded by denying the applicants or sending a two-page questionnaire asking – among other things – examples of their community activities.

By disseminating such a questionnaire exclusively to students, local registrars have effectively raised the bar for qualified young people attempting to participate in their democracy. In Virginia, where the suffrage of homeless persons is defined by “where one lays their head at night,” meticulous scrutiny of only student applications is tantamount to voter intimidation or worse.

Radford isn’t the only place where students will be excluded from the governor’s race. In Norfolk, 250 student applications were outright denied. Additional applicants were given a questionnaire almost exactly like the one issued in Radford. In Williamsburg, where William & Mary students registered with ease from dorm addresses prior to 2004, 100% of on-campus student applicants were denied. The local registrar justifies the denial by calling their dormitory a “temporary address,” but these students – who often have internships away from their parents’ home during the summer – spend less than three months per year away from Williamsburg. The problems caught the attention of the William & Mary student assembly, which unanimously passed a “Declaration for Student Enfranchisement,” calling for the “restoration” of student voting rights within the community.

The problems have been reported in media across the state. On October 26th, the Daily
Press reported, “the local registrar said student dorm addresses don't prove that most students have established a domicile or permanent address in Williamsburg.” Meanwhile, the non-partisan Election Protection Committee has created a hotline to protect every citizen’s right to cast a meaningful ballot. The hotline, 1-800-OUR-VOTE will be operating this Tuesday, November 8th for any person who experiences problems on Election Day.

AllHipHop.com reports that a group called the "National Legal and Policy Center" has filed a complaint with the FEC against P-Diddy and Citizen Change.

Time to get mad: The Washington Post today editorializes against a proposed change in student loan finances that will cost you money. Their mis-placed priorities for the Federal budget are now coming home to roost in our pocket books:

The Senate is likely to vote today on a budget reconciliation measure in which the largest source of "savings" by far comes from the student loan program. The authors of that measure, which the House will tackle next week, say that money comes from cuts in subsidies to lenders. Read the fine print, though, and it seems that, in fact, the "savings" come from increased revenue. And that revenue comes from students, who will be paying higher interest rates to generate it.

So, they are putting the squeeze on students to pay for Iraq, Katrina, and tax cuts?

You can do something about it.

Backlash against the youth vote: Across the country there is an effort, perhaps resulting from the unprecedented show of power by young people across the country at the voting booth last year, to make it harder to vote.

In Wisconsin, which has one of the highest youth voting rates in the country, the assembly is seeking to bypass the Governor's anticipated veto of legislation that woule require a photo ID to register to vote and to vote.

This is particularly bad for students in Wisconsin, who move all around the state within the UW system or who come in from out of state and settle down for years in Wisconsin. Students move around a lot and rarely have up-to-date IDs.

Is your ID current with your address? Take a survey of five friends and check if theirs are. Then see what the consequences of this legislation could be.

Young Uninsured On the Rise:

The Atlanta Business Chronicle has an important article highlighting the growing problem of young people who do not have access to health care.

This is an issue we worked very hard to highlight in 2004 and are continuing to monitor and speak out on.

The article starts by noting that there are a lot more sick and injured young people who are showing up at area hospitals in need of care but they don't have insurance:

More young people without insurance are showing up at Grady Memorial Hospital and other hospitals in Georgia -- a disturbing trend in a state where the problem of the uninsured already costs more than $1.2 billion each year.

One-third of Georgians ages 18-24 are uninsured, and private health insurance coverage has declined 11 percent among this age group in the past five years, according to a new study from the J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University.

The article then quotes a professor who theorizes that young people feel like they don't "need" health insurance because they are young and "invincible."

This is a line of argument that we have really tried hard to push back against at Rock the Vote. There is a myth out there that young people are offered health care on the job but they decline it because they want money instead. In fact, that's not true at all. They're not offered health care in the first place, and certainly they are never offered money instead of coverage. That's laughable.

As the article goes on to say:

Tommie McCommon, director of patient access at Grady, says the two most common reasons for 18- to 24-year-olds being uninsured are unemployment and having a job with no benefits. Those who are employed with no benefits often work in fast-food restaurants or other businesses that don't offer them health coverage, she said.

"They work at lower-paying jobs where they're less likely to be offered insurance and to even be eligible," Ketsche said.

"A lot of workplaces require you to be employed for at least three months to become eligible for insurance, and young people might change jobs frequently."

In addition, health policy experts say, the trend of young uninsured can be traced to the problem of many small and midsized businesses ceasing to offer insurance.

"They're just the tip of the iceberg of what we're going to see as this market crumbles," Minyard said.

So the problems run a little deeper and it is not by choice that young people are going without insurance.

Now, what is true is that it is easier for young people to self-insure than many may realize. You can buy a high deductible insurance plan without having an employer provider. It probably won't cover you for routine stuff, but it will probably cover you for the illnesses, bike and car wrecks, etc that we all know are bound to happen sooner or later---the "catasrophic" events that could easily put you (and/or your parents) thousands and thousands of dollars in debt.

In any event, one of Rock the Vote's proposals here is to let young people stay on their family plans for longer. Young adults get kicked off the family health care plan when they turn 19 or graduate from college in most states. Those who are in school part-time, or don't go at all, or take time off, etc, fall into a huge health care gap that they don't climb out of for years, when they finally get a good job with benefits.

As the article reports, that gap is growing bigger every day.