Early Voting in Ohio

DSC_0011, originally uploaded by Rock the Vote 2008.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Young voters registered yesterday - 20,963
Total voters registered yesterday - 29,445
Miles driven today - 104 so far


4:13 pm - Today marks the first day of early voting in Ohio. From now until election day, anyone who turns up at the county board of elections during business hours can vote or register or both without further ado. This morning, we returned to Wilberforce University and bussed some 60 students to the county office to vote early.

Campaigns, it should be noted, run on the energy of youth. There is no one else who can take the brutal combination of elation, tedium, sleeplessness, anger, joy, and anticipation. I have friends working on campaigns both national and local this election cycle and a sample email I got from one reads as follows:

"Friends,

"I want you to know, that although I have been very AWOL for the past several months, I miss you so much. I don't want to sound like a stalker, but sometimes I check out your facebook pages just so that I can feel like I'm seeing you from time to time and "keeping up." It is clearly not the same.

"The next 38 days are probably going to be the most challenging and exhausting of my life. My job never really ends, and my feeling of accountability has become all-encompassing. It takes a toll. My stomach aches sometimes, and when I sit still in the mornings, I fall asleep unless I drink some serious coffee. And I'm drinking some serious coffee. I believe in what I'm doing. So much so that at this stage of the game, I feel an intense sense of guilt when I take time to call or email anyone who is not an Iowan, working in Iowa on the campaign, or just working on the campaign.

"I have not exercised in months. Yes, months. I've even stopped crunches every day and only do them sometimes. I think you guys understand that that's a big deal. Frankly, sometimes I do not shower as much as I should."

The ‘youth vote’ gets disparaged pretty regularly, and it’s true that we haven’t turned out as much as we maybe should have in the past. But you have to remember that the campaigns themselves wouldn’t exist without the fiendishly devoted young people who act as their shock troops. For every apathetic kid who claims that his vote just doesn’t matter, there is a half-crazed activist fighting against the injustices of the world.

Of course, in politics as in romance, it’s easy to fall into cynicism. You work for a guy for a while and it stops being about issues. You feel a connection. Your candidate understands you. He’s your friend, albeit one you’ve never met. And then he loses and the bottom falls out and everything you worked for seems pointless and foolish. It’s that same old sob story: guy meets candidate, guy falls for candidate, candidate loses, guy ends up broken and alone only to realize that that quirky best friend he’s known since the beginning of the film is the real candidate.

Or... well... the romantic-comedy/election-cycle comparison is not an exact metaphor. I am just saying it’s easy to lose faith in the system when things don’t turn out how you think they should... Think of the non-voters in this election as the cantankerous old hermits who have been used and beaten by the world and will never love again. And then there are the voters. Voting is an affirmation of life. It is a way to have a voice your country’s leadership and through that your country’s future.

And, alright, admittedly, it’s not nearly so stirring to bus someone to the county election center as it is to watch the band geek finally get the girl of his dreams, but if you look for it, there is something touching about a busload of first time voters and the young activists who are needling them on to the polls.

--Nick Brown

Vote on questions for McCain, Obama

Check out a cool project - the Walden University Presidential Youth Debate - that Rock the Vote is a part of.

Senators McCain and Obama have agreed to answer via video 14 questions from young Americans as part of the debate - today, you have a chance to help choose what those 14 questions are.

Go to the Walden University Presidential Youth Debate website before 10pm EST tonight and you can vote for which questions you'd like to see the presidential candidates answer.

Voting closes at 10pm EST today, so check it out and vote now!

The candidates’ video responses will be posted online on October 20th at www.youthdebate2008.org. Make sure to check it out.

Spring Awakening Rocks the Vote

The cast of Spring Awakening, the Tony Award Winning Broadway Musical, wants you to vote. With most of the cast just over the age of 18, many of them will be voting for the first time in this major election year.



Check out what Hunter Parrish (of Weeds) and his fellow cast members have to say about why voting is important in this newly released PSA!

-- Hannah Fishman

Rhymefest at Wilberforce and University of Cincinnati

DSC_0279, originally uploaded by Rock the Vote 2008.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Young voters registered yesterday — 12,399
Miles travelled today — 103

9:36 pm - Some — in fact the bulk — of our hotels should go down in infamy as miserable slimy hovels fit for criminals or travelers from a prior century. Our production manager, Mary, has slept fully clothed for most of the tour because she fears what creatures may infest her bedding.

That said, the last two nights have been an exception. Whoever created or governs the Comfort Suites somewhere near the Buckeye’s stadium in Columbus, Ohio should be treated like a conquering general during a homecoming parade. Real comforters! Clean floors! Sure, the fitness center was a joke, but there was a pool! A pool! The front desk was manned by angels and I actually turned two years younger when I drank from the fountain in the lobby. So here’s some advice to the Columbus-bound: keep this place in mind.

In point of fact, Columbus as a whole treated us absurdly well. We hit Due Amici on Gay street (really) where we had one of the few excellent meals of this trip and then headed to the bars and clubs to impel the late-night drunkards to register.

After leaving the brief Eden of our Columbus hotel, we celebrated Sunday morning as one must: with a bullhorn, speakers, and half-wakened students.

Wilberforce University, the oldest private black university in the country, is situated well away from the hubbub and fury of the city. Large parts of the student body head home for the weekends and those who stay probably don’t expect to be roused by their classmates dashing through the hallways of the dorms screaming civic duty through a bullhorn at 10:00am in the morning.

“Students of Wilberforce. Wake up! You must vote for your future! Our ancestors died for this right!” Cyrus, a student at the school and a volunteer for Rock the Vote, bellowed at the walls. To some it must have seemed that they had flickered from one dream to another: maybe flying effortlessly over the hills of Kentucky and Ohio but and then violently wrenched into some surreal simulacrum of their dorm room. But in this new semi-dream, the dorm room is echoing with the sermons of some half-mad fire-and-brimstone preacher bellowing the gospel of participatory democracy. Have they flipped into a nightmare? Are the avenging demons of their ancestors haunting their dreams with guilt because they have not yet registered? Or is it merely that some nutjob volunteers are pounding on the door with promises of donuts, coffee, and music if they will just fill out some paperwork and vote?

Ah, they conclude as they come to their senses, it is the latter. And headed by that madman Cyrus.

Cyrus may well have had to deal with angry stares and sullen friends this afternoon, but he did pull out the students.

Rhymefest joined us for our stop at Wilberforce University and rode with us on the bus to the University of Cincinnati, a stop that included performances by ICandi and DJizzle and appearances from Miss America, Bootsy Collins, and Buckethead.

That show is now over and we have settled into our current hotel, which briefly looked like it might rival our paradise in Columbus. But it was not to be. My sister and I found our room filled with paint cans and construction equipment. The front desk exchanged it for a second room with mysterious stains on the floor and a doorknob that came off in my hand. Our brief Eden is gone and - whatever we did to deserve it - we must deal with the thorns and thistles of this new, lesser dwelling.

--Nick Brown

Downplay and Double Barrel at OSU

DSC_0158, originally uploaded by Rock the Vote 2008.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Young voters registered yesterday: 18,486
Miles travelled today: 161

10:27 pm Columbus, OH — Friday nights suck. Excuse the vulgarity, but I’ll stand by this position. They are the worm in your apple; the pad of butter you left in the pocket of your laundry; the rat turd in your bag of peanuts. If Friday night was kicked in the groin by the school bully and he collapsed to the floor moaning and rolling, you would know deep down that he deserved it. If Friday night were a president he would be Grover Cleveland. If he were a dictator: Stalin.

I know this is not a popular position. TGI Friday’s, for one, may object. ‘Friday Night Lights’ too. Also: anybody working five days a week in this country. But none of these people have had to starve themselves of sleep every Friday as they charge headlong from one late night event to a football tailgate at an unholy hour of the morning.

Last night the event in question was the televised presidential debate at the Hard Rock Cafe in Cleveland. The headlong charge: from Cleveland to Columbus, arriving at 2:15 am for a four hour nap before an early morning zombie-stumble to the car, coffee, and the Ohio State tailgate.

The good news is that we did good work. In three hours we registered 112 voters, hosted two concerts, and heard ‘Hang on Sloopy’ (the official song of both Ohio State University and the state of Ohio) at least four times.

Ohio State games pull a crowd. Today’s official figure was 105,175. We saw a good solid portion of them as Double Barrel and Downplay played in front of the bus and they are registering and interested. As anyone watching the 2004 election can attest, Ohio matters. With roughly 120,000 votes cast differently, the election would have run the other way. If this football game and the tailgate party around it wanted to, they could probably determine the next president of this country.

Of course we’re not the only ones who see this. Every major voter-registration organization in this country has its shock troops on the ground here trying to expand the electorate. On the more active campuses we have visited, it’s a surprise if we don’t run into some hyper-political student or non-profit employee registering voters... which is why we are taking the bus someplace more unusual this evening. Tonight we are in downtown Columbus standing outside a club and getting people ready for the election day. It will be a long night with little sleep, but there is some solace: it is not Friday.

-- Nick Brown

Pre-Debate Hawthorne Heights Performance at Kent State University

DSC_0062, originally uploaded by Rock the Vote 2008.

Friday, September 26th

Young voters registered yesterday: 19,441
Miles travelled today: 86 so far

7:14 pm - Somewhere between Kent and Cleveland - The debate is just around the corner and there is precious little time to write a thing before we arrive at the Hard Rock Cafe in Cleveland in order to watch. I’m predicting a blazing duel of charisma and policy that leaves both candidates winded and scarred. There’s too much nastiness on air for things not to get a little testy when the candidates meet in person.

We don’t get a lot of that hostile tension with the bus. This afternoon’s performances by Ben Taylor and Hawthorne Heights were pleasant and fairly mellow. When Taylor broke out his folk songs some of the students sat on the grass and leaned back on their hands. You could imagine it was an earlier era and we were sitting back in Northern California with flowers and good intentions. Fury and conflict are pretty foreign to this tour; most people pretty much agree that registering voters is a good thing.

Come to think of it, about the closest thing we have had to hostility came last night on the bus when we parked outside of Cleveland’s House of Blues. It went like this:

A grizzled old man dashed up onto the bus. He stepped uncomfortably close to me and demanded “Do you work here?” I watch movies, so fantasies of what happens next are not hard to come by. Maybe he is mad at our parking job. Perhaps he had an old grudge against one of the musicians whose pictures are printed on the bus walls. Maybe he has a gun. When I am alone, I imagine myself reacting like an action hero in these situations: a quick karate chop and this nefarious stranger is on the floor clutching his throat. In reality, I stand paralyzed.

“You work here?!” he asks again, stepping closer. There are two staffers in the entryway to the bus. We’re both over six feet in the prime of our youth. Maybe we are little out of shape but we are certainly physically prepared to defend our turf.

“... I take pictures,” I stutter. I am about as intimidating as Stuart Little.

“Who works here?” He demands again with a little forward jerk of his head. This man has tattoos. And a hat. And white, dry whiskers. He could probably eviscerate me with his thumb.

Kim - a 5’6”-tall perky midwestern redhead and our political director - steps forward.

“I work here,” she says. It is a glorious and heroic moment.

The stranger pauses. He stares her up and down. I tense up, prepared for sudden violence.

“I’d like to register to vote,” he says.

There is another long pause, as if someone had just announced to Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday, and the Clantons that thanks, but no the OK corral gunfight will not be necessary this afternoon.

Then, of course, things calm down completely and I feel like a buffoon.

If anything, I am feeling a little too accustomed to good will and good intentions. So tonight’s taste of presidential fisticuffs is probably good for us. I’m looking forward to it.

-- Nick Brown

The First Debate is Tonight!

Rock the Vote is hosting 30 debate watching parties tonight throughout the country, and we’d love for you to come on down to these presidential hoedowns.

Some will be held at Hard Rock Cafes, others are hosted by Rock the Vote street teams.
Tonight’s debate begins at 9:00pm EST and lasts until 10:30pm EST.

You can find out the location of the party nearest you by clicking here.

We’re going to have a McCain. We’re going to have an Obama. We’re going to have some fun as we watch two of our potential commanders in chief answer pressing questions of the day.

Bring some friends!

And, even if you can’t make it to one of these events, you should definitely watch or listen to the debates. Glue yourself to the television if you have to. Actually listen to the radio you’ve got in your room but that you haven’t turned on in God knows how long. You might even decide to use your computer to watch a live stream of this thing.

Maybe you want to invite some friends over to watch the debate and have a good time – check out our debate party hosting guide for tips on how to make that event big.

But, most importantly, you should watch the debate so you can experience firsthand a significant part of one of the greatest political dramas our country has ever seen unfold. This debate's taking place at a crossroads in our history: we've got an economy that must be fixed and a foreign policy that has led to great contention at home and abroad.

Watch and listen to what the candidates have to say; know what they believe and what they dream so you can make the most informed decision you can when you cast your ballot.

It’s the first of three presidential debates, and a vice presidential debate between Biden and Palin is also around the corner.

Make sure to bring your enthusiasm.

P.S. -> Here’s a schedule of the debates coming up after tonight’s (each one is scheduled to occur from 9:00pm EST to 10:30pm EST):

Vice Presidential Debate: Thursday, October 2
Second Presidential Debate: Tuesday, October 7
Third Presidential Debate: Wednesday, October 15

Have some good political fun.

Dawn of the Season: Early Voting Begins

You might be one of the lucky people who gets to legally vote before Election Day on November 4.

Early voting began last week in Louisville, Kentucky, and around one-third of all American voters are expected by some experts to vote early.

Americans will be able to vote before Election Day in 34 states and the District of Columbia.

Georgia, Kentucky, and Virginia on Monday, September 22 kicked off the process of statewide early voting, and residents statewide can either walk to the polls or mail in ballots to rock the vote.

Many states, including Georgia, are operating their early voting procedures under new statutes that have increased the timeframe in which voters can cast their ballots before Election Day and have decreased the need for many voters to cast absentee ballots.

The Rocky Mountain region is home to two battleground states, Colorado and New Mexico, in which around half the electorate might vote before Election Day, says Paul Gronke, director of the Early Voting Information Center.

Florida, another critical battleground state, may see up to 40 percent of residents vote early, Gronke says.

It’s never too early to do a good thing.

The Bus in front of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

DSC_0016, originally uploaded by Rock the Vote 2008.

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

Voters registered yesterday - 16,810
Miles travelled today - 32

6:45 pm - Somewhere in Cleveland - You travel with a group for a while and you learn things about them — sometimes even people you were already close to. My sister is on this tour and I have learned that somehow, perhaps by means of a small detonator in the direct geometric center of her duffle bag, she manages to spread her belongings around our hotel rooms in a pattern that can only be described as post-explosive.

Our current hotel room is splattered with various garments and I have found — along with the expected assortment of pants, blouses, skirts, sweatpants, shorts, socks, undergarments, T-shirts, and sweaters — several electric cables, a hairdryer, deodorant, a comb, two pens, a short novel, and various shoes. And this is just the surface layer. It is possible, nay likely, that underneath there are untold treasures. For all I know, a brief excavation could yield fossils of undiscovered dinosaurs. There is no knowing of course, since before such a dig can take place we are forced to leave the cluttered sanctuary of our hotel room and do actual work.

Today’s actual work involved Santogold and Low vs. Diamond at a concert at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Contrary to the name, Case Western is in eastern Ohio, but — when founded in 1826 — was in the western reserve of Connecticut. Of course, since then Connecticut has become an utterly meaningless player in our national elections while Ohio has become pretty much the winner-takes-all state for presidential elections.

Today’s actual work also involved a quick stop for a photo at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame here in Cleveland and a long late night ahead of us at the House of Blues. The bands who played this afternoon for free are playing for a slightly older, wealthier demographic for $30 and we will be spending a good long portion of the night seeking out anyone unregistered within that demographic.

Tomorrow finds us at Kent State with Hawthorne Heights and also finds my sister with the near impossible task of repacking her preposterous mess.

—Nick Brown

Election officials telling college students they can't vote

Not cool.

Local elections officials in Colorado and two towns in South Carolina have been caught telling college students they can't register and vote where they go to school.

This is simply not true. College students have the right - affirmed by a 1979 Supreme Court decision - to vote where they live during college.

When called out on this, officials in Colorado retracted their statement and higher-ups in South Carolina denied responsibility.

These shenanigans in Colorado and South Carolina follow hot on the heels of a recent incident in Montgomery County, VA where a local registrar issued a statement threatening college students with financial and legal harm if they registered to vote at school. The county issued a new statement after these threats were proven baseless.

I can't tell you how angry this makes me.

Not only have students' rights to vote been protected by the highest court in the land for nearly 30 years, but targeting a specific group of voters based solely on a shared demographic characteristic - being students - is insidious and reminiscent of the days when race and economic status were blatantly used to prevent people from voting. This statement puts it more eloquently than I ever could.

Trying to scare students away from registering and voting is a civil rights violation, pure and simple, and a stain on our democracy.

Put another way: "'Voter residency requirements vary from state to state, but must meet the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution,' said Jon Greenbaum, a voting rights expert with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Greenbaum said that what states and counties can’t do is adopt rules that treat one group of voters differently than others."

And that's the key. States make the election rules (so long as they comply with the Constitution) and they do vary - but singling out a group of voters is never OK. Equal protection and all.

Rock the Vote won't stand for this - and we need your help to make sure all eligible voters can cast a ballot this year. There are two ways you can help.

1. Tell us if you're wrongly turned away from registering or voting. Report online here or call 1-866-OUR-VOTE. Lawyers are standing by and can help.

2. Sign up to volunteer with Rock Your Rights - over the next 39 days, we'll be monitoring issues like this and taking action to prevent disenfranchisement.

Absentee Voting and You

[Ed.'s note, if you live in Michigan, Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee or Illinois, visit www.longdistancevoter.org to see if you are affected by these laws.]

Monday, after participating in my first voter registration effort with Rock the Vote in partnership with the Baltimore Ravens, I was thrilled to be practicing what I had preached. Yesterday, while in an effort to request an absentee ballot from my home state, Tennessee, I noticed a caution statement at the bottom of the list of absentee voter requirements:

CAUTION: If you register to vote by mail you must vote in person in the first election after your registration becomes effective. You CANNOT vote by absentee ballot...

I am a first time voter so I immediately contacted my election board to clarify if I had, in fact, registered by mail. Because I had, they told me the law stood as is, unless I traveled 840 miles home to re-register or participate in early voting I would not be able to vote absentee in the state of Tennessee. Overwhelmed with the thought of being denied the right to vote absentee as a Tennessee resident, I immediately thought of all the people who will not know this law until it is too late. The thought of thousands of college students and first time voters who will not be able to travel to their designated precincts to cast their vote on November 4, but will not be able to vote absentee because of this law infuriates me. I consider myself lucky because I received this information early enough to fix the problem. But what about those who will not?

It is up to all of us who know our rights to inform others of the different stipulations legislation puts on voter's eligibility. In every election young voters are faced with all the twists and turns that prohibit them from being eligible to vote and in retrospect...silencing their voices. Let your voice be heard this election. Stand and up, Speak out, and Choose to Rock the Vote.

-Cortney D. Griffith

On the Way to Cleveland

DSC_0077, originally uploaded by Rock the Vote 2008.

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

Voters registered yesterday: 16,303
Miles driven today: 62

11:25 pm - As I'm writing this our economy is collapsing. And not some gentle fall-back-onto-your-pillow collapse. This is the real deal. A full-blown-house-of-cards-kicked-down-by-your-older-brother collapse. Lou Dobbs is frothing at the mouth ready to physically assault some poor congressman. He is one of the many on-air pundits trying to personify the subsurface rage of most of us feel. We are all too baffled by the details of who took what from whom and how to even begin to contemplate a solution.

Of course, the solution - or lack thereof - will determine the fate of us youths. When jobs start disappearing, those dreams of making it big start to look a lot less reasonable and the freshly-hatched college grads who are taking their first breath in the working world are as likely as not to end up stifled in some miserable minimum-wage grind.

And here comes the segue-- we spent the afternoon trying give those soon-to-be college grads a voice in their government. First stop: University of Akron, an undeniably beautiful school with a kangaroo mascot named Zippy. Zippy didn't put in an appearance, but several members of his constituency did. We registered 47 voters during the course of a quick concert by Bang Camaro and then picked up anchor and headed for Kent State University, where we will be hosting a concert on Friday headlined by Hawthorne Heights.

-- Nick Brown

Ms. America Rocks the Vote

I am so excited to be at my school, the University of Cincinnati, to help Rock the Vote get the word out to young people. Their voice needs to be heard-- especially in this year's election. As Miss America and as a fellow student, I feel that it is my responsibility to educate my peers on the importance of taking advantage of the nonpartisan information Rock the Vote provides, and using that information to make an informed decision when voting this November.

We need to realize that EVERY vote counts. We are a huge demographic and the candidates know that in order for them to win this election, they must reach out to us and tell us what changes they can make to better our futures. That's power!

This is one of the last weeks you can register to vote for the 2008 election. I encourage every one of you to make sure everyone you know over the age of 18 is registered, and that they come out to the polls on November 4th! Young voters have a chance to make history this year. Whatever party you decide to go with, just go out and ROCK THE VOTE!

-- Kirsten Haglund, 2008 Ms. America

Students at Boardman HS register for their first election

DSC_0055, originally uploaded by Rock the Vote 2008.

Bus Blog - Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

Miles travelled today: 109
Voters registered yesterday: 13,641

5:13 pm - Ohio! Land of tight elections, fish fries, and - for the first century of our republic - freedom from slavery.

In the present century it’s hard to argue that Ohio isn’t critical to any presidential hopeful and the advertising is out in force here. I have now been in our hotel room, an eerily sterile place, for fifteen minutes and seen three political advertisements. They are all vicious things suggesting one candidate or the other will destroy the country, set about armageddon, or otherwise severely muddle things up. You can leave a half-an-hour of TV fairly well convinced that the candidates are traitors, pederasts, or both.

Of course, I have worked with campaigns that tried to run clean and they tend to lose pretty badly. Americans may not like attack ads, but we do believe them.

We stopped at our first high school today, Boardman High School in Youngstown, Ohio. Outside the marching band and cheerleaders readied themselves to be bussed off to some distant football game while the nerds, goths, and stoners snickered in the hallways. For the first time, we ran into people who didn’t know their social security numbers. Job applications, credit checks, and utility bills have yet to hit these kids. This is the young end of the youth vote.

Ten minutes into our high-school visit, the hall monitor informed us that no one actually complied with the school’s dress code. “None of you have shaven,” he explained. “And you are using cell phones on school property. And that guy has cut off the bottom of his pants. And your jeans are ripped.”

A Navy representative had the table next to ours in the hallway and he sat smiling. He was clean-shaven and his pants were spotless.

He won the social victory, but it’s worth noting that our registration total (34 at the school) beat his.

--Nick Brown

New Rock the Vote Poll

Today, Rock the Vote released the results of our latest poll of 18-29 year olds, the first to ask young people their thoughts on McCain-Palin vs. Obama-Biden and the most recent to ask young voters what issues are deciding their vote this fall.

Here are some interesting tidbits; you can check out the full results here.

The faltering economy is at the top of young voters' minds.

• 41% of those surveyed said the next president, whoever he is, should take action on the economy and jobs as his first move in office.
  
• 51% said "creating jobs" was a 10 on a scale of 1-10 (most important) in deciding for whom to vote in November - higher than anything else, although nearly tied with "gas prices/energy" at 50%.

We want more talk of issues in this presidential campaign.

• Health care, college affordability, jobs and the economy, the environment - for nearly every issue we asked about, young voters said the presidential candidates are spending "not enough time" talking about them.
  
• 63% want to hear more about creating jobs, 56% want to hear more about health care, and 64% want to hear more about college affordability. 54% want more on gas prices/energy and 50% want more on immigration.

Young voters are paying serious attention to this election, and know they will play a major role in a historic moment.

• 87% plan to vote in November (up from 82% in our February poll);
• 92% have talked with friends or family about the election;
  
• 57% are following the election extremely or very closely (up from 42% in February);
• 88% think that, as a group, young people have the power to change things in this country;
  
• 82% think this election is an opportunity to make history by electing the first African American president; 69% think this election is an opportunity to make history by electing the first woman vice president.
  

Young voters continue to trend Democratic.

• In today's poll, 50% of 18-29 year olds say they are Democrats, 29% say they are Republicans, and 12% say they are Independents.
  
• When asked for whom they will vote in November, 56% say Barack Obama and 29% say John McCain. 13% remain undecided.
  
• For Congress, 49% say they will vote for the Democratic candidate and 27% for the Republican candidate.

Clearly, young people are energized, paying attention, and keyed into top campaign issues - candidates from president on down to city council should get out there and talk to young voters. All signs point to 2008 being the third major election in a row with increased young voter turnout - and the more we see on the ground, from our polling, and online, the more likely it looks like we might hit record turnout levels on November 4th.

41 days to go! See you at the polls.

Monday in Pittsburgh, PA

Monday, September 22nd

9:45 pm - Driving into Pittsburgh can throw a cynic for a loop. We think of this mountain city as an industrial wasteland driven by coal and steel. And it may well have been, but when you come through the tunnel and catch the sunset glinting off the bridges of the spired city below, you can't help but think of Oz or Atlantis. Unless you are Gary, our bus driver.

"I hate this city," he announced.

Gary's hatred comes from a long-ago football injury that some irate Pittsburgh Steeler inflicted on a Cincinnati quarterback. It's a grossly unfair way to judge an entire city, but after four hours in traffic on the randomly reconstructed streets of Pittsburgh, you have to sympathize a bit with Gary. While I did not keep an exact tally, it seems that we took somewhere between four and five hundred detours in a long and frustrating attempt to get back onto the highway before we finally moved through the city and reached our hotel.

Yesterday, we made two forays into the city itself: the first to the Pittsburgh Pirates home field to register the Sunday afternoon masses at PNC park and the second to host a concert at Pittsburgh University. The concert in question was headlined by local hip-hop artist (hip-hartist) Wiz Khalifa with performances from Trevor Menear, and Donora.

The concerts were lovely. And we did good work. Voters registered: check. Concert performed: check. But the real highlight of yesterday was the certain knowledge that today was a rest day. Today was a day of rest and we are thankful for it. Tomorrow we head for Akron.

President Bartlet wants you to Vote

Last night, for the first time since the West Wing aired its final episode in 2006, Former President Bartlett made a TV appearance. In front of the broad-based audience of the 60th Prime Time Emmy Awards, Martin Sheen sat in a mini oval office, proclaiming the importance of voting.

"As viewers of the West Wing know, our show was never in any way partisan in the dramatization of government. Our show was about one simple fact: that decisions are made by those who show up. And that's why I'm encouraging everyone to take part in America's finest hour and on November 4, vote for the candidate of your choice, at least once."

"Decisions are made by those who show up."

If that's not a reason to vote, I don't know what is.

But please, only vote once.

-- Hannah

The Next Round of Disenfranchisement: Fight Back

See what these folks are doing?



They’re registering to vote at a Flobots concert we attended back in May.

They’re members of the 18-29 age demographic, a group electoral analysts have said will play a critical role in determining the outcome of the upcoming general election. Even though the youth vote made a big impact on the outcomes of the primaries earlier this year, new obstacles have arisen that might make it harder for some of America’s youth in certain areas of the country to vote in the general election.

On August 25, a county registrar in Virginia claimed that students attending school in the county risk their financial security if their home address is out-of-state and they register to vote in the county. He claimed students who registered to vote in the county under these circumstances could lose the ability to be declared as dependents on their parents’ tax returns, and said this could impact their finances while at college.

Talk about a turn-off to voting. It’s good for the students that the registrar was wrong. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said his statement was incorrect, and a 1979 Supreme Court decision affirmed students’ right to register to vote at their college address.

The county registrar, after questioning by civil rights lawyers, issued a clarification to the August 25 memo in this document and said it did not have a position on if any element of student’s finances would be affected by registering to vote outside their home county.

This is not the only recent story of potential disenfranchisement. Currently, there’s a political storm brewing in Michigan regarding the disenfranchisement of voters whose homes have been foreclosed, and we’ll keep you updated on the legal weather over there.

With the state registration deadlines for the general elections approaching, we must be even more critical of any and all apparent attempts by anyone to in any way disenfranchise voters without due and just cause. It is important for you make sure that you’re still registered to vote and that you have not been removed from registered voter lists. You too should have the chance to impact the course of the nation.

One of the best ways you can take direct action to make sure your voting rights are secure is utilizing our Rock Your Rights page. We’ve partnered with the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and other groups to protect and promote voting rights this year and beyond.

Fight for your right to vote on Election Day.

Between State College and Pittsburgh

Saturday, September 20

Somewhere between State College, PA and Pittsburgh, PA

9:53 pm EDT - Fall means college football and Saturday
college football means something heretofore unimagined by me. Here's
the trick: some schools — not the one I attended and none of the ones
I have ever before visited — have a real sense of school spirit
anchored in football. Some of these schools, let us call a
hypothetical one 'Penn State' seem to regularly draw crowds larger
than several small cities.

We happened to be at this 'Penn State' this morning and while I don't
have the official attendance, I do know the average stadium attendance
last year was over 105,000 and that the stadium's capacity is the
largest in the country at 107,282 (Michigan used to be larger, but
it's capacity has been reduced due to an accessibility lawsuit). To
put this in perspective, Casper, Wyoming — the largest city in Wyoming
— is around 50,000 people. A capacity crowd at Beaver Stadium is
fourteen times the size of Wasila, Alaska; it's 40,000 people more
than you need to get onto a statewide ballot in Pennsylvania; it's
constitutes around one-fifth of a US congressional district. Today the
stadium had a capacity crowd and then some.

Max Kennedy, Robert Kennedy's son, joined us as we registered
students, alums, and the odd parent.

I am fairly certain the event was successful, though it's tinted in my
memory by the yellow light that comes from being right near the edge
of a dream. The bus finally arrived in State College, PA at 5:00 am
last night. We dropped it off in front of Beaver stadium and then
drove for an hour over mist-soaked backroads to our hotel. We arrived
at 6:30, slept enough for exhaustion to set in, and then pulled on
yesterday's clothes and trekked back to the massive stadium.
Adrenaline and Red Bull carried us through the first hours, but at a
certain point consciousness started seeming like a real burden. I have
photographs of two dancing pretzels in front of the bus, so I am
fairly sure that actually happened, but my hazy memories of
photographs taken, students stopping into the bus, and songs spun
split in and out with feverish images of misty roads, Pennsylvania
woodlands, and our briefly occupied hotel room.

Tomorrow we head to a Pirates game and then to University of
Pittsburgh for a concert and voter registration.

Nick Brown

Between Philadelphia and State College

Saturday, September 20

Somewhere between Philadelphia and State College, PA

1:34 am -- Today - or yesterday, technically - involved a return to
South Street with the bus in tow to register the early evening crowds.
They are a curious bunch, particularly this evening. For reasons never
made clear, we arrived as three-hundred howling and sputtering
motorcycles tore off into the night. These people are not your
parents' bikers. The heavily-bearded swastika-tattooed leather-clad
Hell's Angels riding chopped hogs are no longer the only riders
around. Nor are Harleys the dominant bikes. This crowd here is of a
different sort. Black leather is still the dominant motif, but some
few bikers wore greens, reds, and blues. Nor are the bikes the
stripped down American-made Harleys. Toyotas, Beemers, and other
foreign-born beauties streaked off South Street and down Fourth Avenue.

Our registration efforts were more or less successful. It must be a
refreshing surprise to be accosted on a Friday with someone who
doesn't want directions or a cigarette. Still, when that stranger is
asking where you live and what your social security number is, your
imagination might run wild.

Are these oddly uniformed 'Rock the Vote'
people members of some fiendish cult of identity theft? The bus adds
legitimacy, but only so much. The word on the street is trust no one
without serious credentials or dangerous weapons with any of your
vital numbers. We are a charming bunch though, so after some serious
eyelash batting we can usually get them registered or - worst case
scenario - direct them to the website.

We aborted our efforts around 10:30 after the GPS system delivered the
unwelcome news that State College, PA - our stop tomorrow - is a good
five hours from Philadelphia. We are a crack squad of professionals,
so our first move - vital to the success of any long ride - was to get
terribly lost. U-turns are not an option in the bus and Philadelphia
has designed the streets so that the shortest distance between points
A and B is frequently a wandering twist through one way streets. So we
are off to a rough start.

As I am writing this we are approaching 3 am, high on caffeine, and our
destination and sleep are still some ways off.

-- Nick Brown

Road Trip Stop-- Philadelphia, PA

Friday, September 19

2:03 pm EST - There is such a thing as being too close to a concert. The bass kicks in and you can feel the subwoofers shaking you to the marrow in a way that would have put the fear of God into people of an earlier time. These too close spots tend to be where the photographers are and while it makes for some great photos, when I am rocking back and forth in a catatonic state of shell shock in some old person's home many years from now, I'll trace the beginning of my decline to the artillery-like thudding of the stagefront at this past concert. Setting aside explosive sound-compression for a moment though, being close up gives a guy a chance to get some very solid photographs.

This concert, though technically not our kickoff, was our first major affair. Talib Kweli headlined the thing and Solange, Trevor Menear , and the James Gang. We also had Bobby Kennedy's son, Max Kennedy, and Joey Pants (the Sopranos), an actor who played a member of one of the organizations Bobby Kennedy spent his entire career trying to eradicate.

We funneled the crowd through a corridor of voter registration volunteers. Anyone who managed to stay unregistered throughout the concert must have had to make a real effort. Numbers wise, we have now registered hundreds of people on the bus and almost 87,000 online since this tour started.

In search of celebration afterwards, some select few of us hit Philadelphia's own South Street where the piercings per capita run at well over 5 and the late crowd draws in freaks, clowns, and a single Flavor Flav impersonator complete with Viking hat and timepiece. In all, not a bad way to end a day devoted to music and politics.

-- Nick Brown

Campus Media Buzz About Voter Registration

College media groups across the country reported great strides in campus voter registration efforts over the past week.

Here’s a few of the newspapers out there that reported the good words:

The Rocky Mountain Collegian, Colorado State University’s student newspaper, said one of the campus’ student-run political groups, Vote CSU!, successfully opened up voter registration stations throughout CSU’s student center. Vote CSU! is working to open up additional voter registration stations at convenience store counters across CSU’s campus. The organization’s goal is to register 10,000 voters by October 6, Colorado’s voter registration deadline.

The University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s student paper, The Daily Collegian, reported that numerous campus political groups banded together to form the Voter Registration Coalition. The group’s innovative and creative plans for increasing voter registration include playing games such as “Jeopardy” to educate students about the voter registration process. The Voter Registration Coalition hopes to register 9,000 voters by October 15, the general election voter registration deadline for Massachusetts.

In Tennessee, the University of Memphis’ student paper, The Daily Helmsman, told how numerous campus groups collectively held a 12-hour voter registration drive in one of U Memphis’ main venues. The event’s organizers, which included political clubs and greek life organizations, encouraged students from out-of-state to complete and send in absentee ballots. The university’s chapter of the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity spiced up the event through donating money that was used to bring in food, bands and DJs.

Students like these are making democracy proud.

Rock the Vote Illadelph!

Philadelphia Community College 15, originally uploaded by Rock the Vote 2008.

The Road Trip bus stopped at the Community College of Philadelphia today to register voters and throw a concert featuring Talib Kweli and Solange Knowles.

Check out more photos here.

Hundreds of people came out for the afternoon concert. The road trip crew is a little tired from dancing, so stay tuned for more stories.

Day 6-- Philadelphia

11:26 am EDT - Spend enough time wandering around the highways of
America and an element of deja vu becomes inevitable. Is this the
Sbarro where I stopped in as Obama was giving his Pennsylvania speech
on the meaning of race in American politics or the one where I once
won a stuffed animal from the claw game in the corner? The structure
of each place is identical, as are the restaurants. Wander anywhere
across highway 80 and you will never be more than 50 miles from a
roadside Roy Rogers. The bathrooms all pour perfectly tepid water from
their motion activated sinks, the prices are inflated up to near-
airport levels of absurdity, and each one will have in place its
requisite midwestern family complete with slightly overweight father
and two children begging to have french fries for breakfast.

At this particular rest stop - the Chesapeake House in northern
Maryland - two Russian blondes from Novgorod (just outside Moscow
apparently) manned the Starbucks counter. I attempted to flirt with
them with the following result:

"So you guys are from Russia?"

"Yes."

"I was in Russia once... not in your part of Russia though."

"Oh."

"So I guess you speak Russian?"

"Yes."

"Not me. Just English."

"Oh."

She then turned to her companion and said something which probably
translated to either a) 'what a debonair and worldly young man' or b)
'there are people behind him in line. Why won't he just order?'

"Boy, Russia. That's great," I said.

She smiled and waited.

"So I guess I'll have a venti vanilla Chai latte..."

Here she smiled and turned again to her friend saying either a) 'how
worldly! Chai is from India, you know' or b) 'this guy orders like an
eight-year-old girl. He probably orders his steaks a la mode.' Either
way she smiled at me, which I take as a personal victory.

I ought to explain here that I am fairly sensitive to the reactions of
the waitresses since our DJ, Aaron, has beaten me in the one impromptu
beauty contest of this trip. Our waitress at the time, a kindly
southern matron named Tina, picked him as the more attractive of the
two of us at the Ryan's buffet in Bristol. I have been seeking to
repair my battered ego and while I didn't quite have the gumption to
ask the lovely Russian behind the counter to choose between us, she
did smile at me - or possibly at my extraordinarily effeminate drink -
which is at least a small victory.

New NEA Poll on College Affordability

At no time in history has a college education been more necessary or expensive - students are resorting to loans in greater numbers and in greater amounts than ever before.

A new National Education Association poll released yesterday on college affordability found that 61% of current students and 77% of recent graduates used student loans to finance all or part of their college educations. The amount of student loans has also increased for our generation. 34% of recent college graduates totaled their student loan debt to $20,000 - $49,999. Only 6% of parents shouldered that same financial burden for their college years.

College costs are obviously a huge concern for young people, with a full three-quarter of current students naming it as a very important issue for them in the upcoming election. Students have been hit hard on a number of fronts by the faltering economy – tuition is rising, textbooks are more expensive, and even filling up the gas tank to get to class can be a challenge. The debt students accumulate in school can follow them around for years after they graduate, severely impacting the quality of their lives as they struggle to repay loans. But, not many elected officials are actually talking about the high cost of education and the impact it is having on our generation. Another 83% of survey respondents said Congress has done a poor or just fair job on the issue of college affordability.

A majority expressed support for increased federal involvement in finding a solution for rising college costs. According to the NEA poll, respondents favored a plan to offer all incoming college students an annual $4,000 tuition credit in exchange for 100 hours of public service per year over a proposal to expand the lender-of-last-resort capability of the federal student loan program and demand higher standards for private lenders by a 2 to 1 margin.

So where do the current presidential candidates stand? Check out Barack Obama’s position on education here. John McCain’s plan can be found here.

So, what do you think of the proposals currently on the table? What’s your idea for making college affordable for everyone? Let’s hear it!

Road Trip Stop at the DC VA Medical Center

DC area VA hospital 3, originally uploaded by Rock the Vote 2008.

Today's stop made history as Rock the Vote held the first voter registration drive at the DC VA Medical Center since the ban was overturned.

In this photo (credit Nick Brown):
Political Director Kim Rogers registers a US veteran. Aaron DJs in the background.

Richmond, VA

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

11:21 pm - The bus hit two events today. First a brief voter drive at Virginia Commonwealth University where we registered the small contingent of very sleepy students who managed to get out of bed early enough to catch our bus in the mid-morning rain, register, and then wander back to bed or to class or wherever else their near catatonic states took them.

The second event involved our crack squad of newbie roadies throwing together a stage, speakers, DJ booth, and sound box in a frantic fifteen-minute flurry after the power went out at Virginia Union University. Power outage notwithstanding we drew three or four hundred students out of a student body of twelve hundred for a concert with The Band Belief, Bugs Raleigh, C4, and the Scholars. Of those we had a hundred voters freshly registered.

The concert - to use the phrasing appropriate to our generation given the times - kicked ass.

In order to really celebrate fully, I felt that it was important to lose my hotel key. This is a dangerous proposition in our current hotel, as it is run and occupied by nincompoops and wretches. To be fair, they are renovating the hotel which may make it a livable place in some few years. For the moment though the only tap water available scalds the skin off your palms; the towel racks are positioned to bludgeon the unwary bathroom goer; construction debris litters the hallways; the weight room has only a ten pound weight and a Pepsi machine rather than water; jackhammers wake you in the early morning; zombies roam the basement; the spirits of the damned haunt your dreams; and - really, genuinely - one of our party woke this morning to find two construction workers in his room. Fortunately, I caught the day-shift desk attendant before she left for the evening and she was willing to remagnetize some plastic cards for me.

Unfortunately, both my roommate - DJ Aaron James - and I lost our keys later in the night, forcing us to brave the lobby after the witching hour. The desk attendant, probably a perfectly reasonable woman before she was reincarnated in her present profession, made the new keys with little fuss, but while we hovered in the ghoulish lobby, we saw two separate domestic disputes progress from yelling to violence with little reaction from the hotel staff or any lobby dwellers.

Tomorrow we head to our nation's capital early in the morning and then to Annendale, VA for an afternoon of vote rocking.

Virginia Tech and Refueling

Monday, September 15, 2008

11:30 pm EDT - For the first time today we operated with our own stage. That is to say the stage under the bus. The great thing about using our stage is that it gave everyone something collective to do. Brian and Chad - two gentlemen from the bus whose job description has been somewhat vague - played the part of roadies along with me and our DJ, Aaron.

Being a roadie from my one day's experience, is a deeply satisfying experience. The pattern runs: lift, assemble, lift again, look for lost parts, stand around waiting for someone to find lost parts, lift again, finally assemble full, and then admire your work.

Sure, we missed some spots of velcro here and there and Aaron set up the DJ booth right next to the exhaust valve for the generator, but these are trees and I choose to see the forest.

Of course, we didn't actually use the stage once it was up. Our illustrious leader, Heather Smith, gave a few quick interviews with local press including a brief segment with the Roanoke Times

Then some devilishly handsome fellow encouraged Virginia Tech students to come register with the tried and true method of accidentally referring to them as UVA students and getting booed off stage.

Nick (the guy writing this) makes a complete jackass of himself.

After packing up the bus, reviving our asphyxiated DJ, and leaving the campus we hit the road to Richmond, where we had our first refueling of this gargantuan creature.

The Bus is 45 feet long, 12' 10" tall, and has a 300 gallon fuel tank. At current gas prices, a single refueling runs around $1000 and takes twenty minutes. While this monster guzzled up a month's rent in fuel costs, I paid a brief visit to Chaplain Bunny Gregory, the pastor of Trucking for Jesus.

Pastor Gregory and his wife are one of those weird, uniquely American couples transplanted from an earlier age. Subtract the truck and beard and the pastor would fit in some 19th century pastoral painting or a Norman Rockwell drawing.

"It takes about a year to get this thing around the country," he said. "We go west and about as far up as Redding, California and then turn around and come back."

We walked inside the truck. "It's about half church and half living quarters," he explained. "She's called Sheneda because 'she need a' lot of love."

"I've had 5,338 people accept the lord every night and day." The chapel smelled like lavender. The pastor pointed out the soap and bibles he has been given by well wishers.

"You ride around across the country and you see a lot of people walking... Doctor's from Germany and stuff like that." We walked back outside where the sun was setting. It seemed like an unusually specific group of people.

I got a picture of him as Gary, our bus driver, pulled up. "You also get a lot of walkers in the Appalachians. I've been doing this for 34 years now," he said, as if about to tell a story. "Well... anyway. You all have a good time out there on the road."

Virginians are Rockin’ the Voter Registration

Virginia’s Board of Elections ordered a whopping 200,000 additional voter registration forms after citizens throughout the state spoke out and rocked their right to vote .

The Board ordered the voter registration forms after a big increase in the number of registrants exceeded the Board’s expectations. This is what we like to call a “good problem,” because the problem – the shortage of ballots – came as the result of more people wanting to participate in the electoral process.

Virginia has recently seen a dramatic increase in voter registration among the 18-35 years of age group. In mid-August, 64 percent of the 200,000 voters who had registered since January were in this age cohort. After you whip out calculator and do some math, that’s about 128,000 new youth voters in Virginia alone. And that was back in August.

Some Virginians who have asked for registration forms want to fill out those forms to make sure they’re registered, to guarantee their ability to vote even if they registered before. Their proactive stance regarding November 4, their desire to make sure they’ll have the ability to help affect the future of America through the power of the ballot, is exemplary of true American patriotism.

Virginia’s voter registration deadline is October 6, and a complete list of voter registration deadlines for the 50 states and the District of Columbia can be found here.

Rock the Vote was in Blacksburg, VA today, causing part of the voter registration "problem." Check out photos here.

Hispanic Heritage Month!

Today marks the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month!

The Hispanic population in the U.S. is the 2nd largest in the world, second only to Mexico. Hispanic in the U.S. are the fastest growing ethnic population in the U.S. The U.S. Hispanic population has more than doubled from 1990 to today and is now estimated to be at 45.5 million according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Talk about a powerful group!

Not only are Hispanics the fastest growing ethnic group but the median age of the population is 27.6 years old compared with 36.6 for the rest of the U.S. population. That is almost 10 years younger than the national average! Now think about the effect Hispanic youth could have on this election!

Make sure your voice is heard and the Hispanic youth population is represented by registering to vote in this election! Log onto rockthevote.com to register and spread the word to make sure your friends are registered too!

You can also help yourself to stay informed of important voter deadlines, events and updates by texting VOTE to RTVOTE (788683)! Lets make sure our voices are heard by registering and voting in this election!

Day 2-- Nashville to Blacksburg

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

9:16 pm EDT - Highway 40 out of Nashville is not for the sleepy, or those with poor eyesight. In Nebraska, going across highway 80, you can let go of the steering wheel and - if you are
driving something new and foreign on a windless day - you can hold your course for hours. The highway out there is a long flat slab of concrete that cuts through the endless fields of corn between Lincoln and North Platte. Not so I-40. The Tennessee interstate twists through
the hills of western Tennessee with discomfiting irregularity. Drift for a moment here and you will find yourself plunging off into the trees, a ditch, or some unlucky woodland creature. Being sleepy, I medicated myself with several doses of Red Bull then threw on a Big Smith album (when in the country you've got to listen to... well, country) and drove with a fluttering heart rate and mongoose reflexes.

The good news is that when you are following a forty-foot monster-bus, you can't really get lost. We are on our way to Blacksburg, VA where we will spend the night and register some voters before storming into Richmond tomorrow night for Tuesday vote-rocking.

Politically speaking, we are in red territory right now. The red, white, and blue 'support our troops' magnetic ribbons on pickup trucks far outnumber the 'go green' bumper stickers on hybrids, but - again judging by bumper sticker traffic - we are a divided nation even here.

Around 6:30 we pulled into Bristol, designated in 1998 by Congress as the 'Home of Country Music' in honor of Ralph Peer recording The Carter family there in 1927. The town straddles the Tennessee--Virginia divide and along with country music is home to Ryan's Buffet, where
our lovely waitress Tina declared - after some pressure from my colleague Aaron - that Aaron was the more attractive of the two of us. I am holding out for a recount.

Road Trip Day 2

Early in the evening at the Mercy Lounge

Saturday, September 14, 2008

8:23 pm - From my 24 hours in Nashville, I have determined the city is
the home of the Grand Ole Opry; good barbeque; Vanderbilt University;
country music; a weathered old cabbie with tobacco stains around his
lips who spoke like a Southerner but had an intimate knowledge of New
York City; and - disappointingly - not Elvis.

It is also the home of a 6.4 billion dollar music industry, almost all
of which is based around country music. But - as both major candidates
can attest - change is in the air, and so the Rock the Vote Road Trip Bus stopped in at the Mercy Lounge to listen in to a concert in 'The Next Big Nashville'
series. The idea is essentially to promote all of the non-country
bands out here.

-- Nick Brown

From the Road Trip-- Day One

1:45 pm CDT - It’s a sunny, stunningly beautiful, ungodly hot day at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. Our glorious brand-new Rock The Vote bus is parked two hundred yards from a stage where the local band ‘Biscuits and Gravy’ are doing their sound check.

The bus

On October 7th, less than a month from now, Belmont will host the second of three presidential debates. You may remember it from past years. Debate number two is the one where heavily vetted everyday Americans will get to ask whatever pressing questions a panel of debate moderators deem suitable for a national audience. There will be no freaks, weirdos, or conspiracy theorists among the questioners here, which is probably just as well, though it will make things less exciting.

And less exciting is not what we want. Those of us among the Rock-The-Vote generation - we eighteen-to-twenty-somethings who are voting for our first or second time - like excitement. We are the YouTube, interactive video-gaming, eyes-thoughts-and-selves-plugged-into-the-internet generation. We are Wikipedia editors, political bloggers, environmentalists, fundamentalists, minimum-wage workers without health care, and i-bankers with second homes. Honestly we are a diverse bunch. And, electorally speaking, we are a sleeping giant. This election Rock The Vote has registered 1.5 million of us. That’s roughly ten times Kerry’s margin of victory in Pennsylvania in ‘04; twelve-and-a-half times Bush’s margin of victory in Ohio; and 150 times Bush’s margin of victory in Iowa. If us youngsters come out to the polls on November 4th, the candidates - both of them - will have to start listening. And excitement brings us out.

So we are having a bus tour. Because a bus tour is exciting. And we are using that excitement to build on the underlying excitement of this election. We youngins are starting a movement. Call cultural, call it political, call it what you want, but 49% of 18 to 29 year olds came out to vote in '04, which was up nine points from four years earlier. And we aim to continue that trend. And one facet of that is our bus tour. And you can find out where we are bus-touring here. And I am done grandstanding for the moment.

4:36 pm CDT - The first vote-rocking of the tour has occurred. The rockers in question: Biscuits and Gravy, Natalie Henderson, Gordon Kennedy, and - our headliner - Melinda Doolittle.

The entire ensemble attended Belmont in their college years and Gordon won a grammy for ‘Change the World’ in 1996. A picture is worth a bunch of words though, so I’ll let the ones below speak for the afternoon.

Biscuits and Gravy serve up delicious southern-style... music


Natalie Henderson visits the bus


Gordon Kennedy plays for the building crowd


Melinda Doolittle vote-rocking


Melinda again.

-- From Rock the Vote activist Nick Brown

Xbox Enters Politics

Avid gamers across the country now have an easier way of registering to vote and getting involved in the biggest game this year: the 2008 presidential election.

Rock the Vote recently partnered with Microsoft to make the Xbox 360 into a political gaming machine.

You can now use Xbox Live, the Xbox 360’s online digital exchange system, to register to vote, chat about politics, and make your opinions known in polls.

Together, we’re taking gaming to a whole new level. You can be a part of the most important game yet.

Log on to Xbox Live today and make your voice heard. Some Xbox Live election poll results are already in.

Veterans' Voting Rights-- Won!

Over the course of this summer, Rock the Vote activists wrote thousands of emails to their Congressmen and women, asking them to co-sponsor the Veterans Voting Support Act and overturn the ban on voter registration drives.

Yesterday, the Dept. of Veterans Affairs overturned the ban:

Veterans officials said that they would welcome state and local election officials and nonpartisan groups to hospitals and outpatient clinics to help register voters but that such assistance needed to be coordinated by those facilities in order to avoid disruptions to patient care.

Over 1,049,398 people aged 18-29 have served in Iraq or Afghanistan. Young veterans are a crucial part of the young voter movement. We've got one month left to register voters. Let's make sure we reach the young veterans that are recovering in government facilities.

Rockin The Vote- New Soundtrack

Check out our partners at myMuze and the Rock the Vote soundtrack they've put out for the 2008 elections.

Inspired?

You and your band can compose a song using one of the beats and compete for a three-song deal with the myMuze label. Find out more here, or purchase the album from iTunes.