"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.