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.