Saving the Youth Vote
A new youth organization is trying to get past the “big smiles and empty rhetoric” and turn youth voting into something substantive.
Florida A&M University students look over a sample ballot while standing in line to vote at the Leon County Courthouse, Oct. 27, 2004, in Tallahassee, Fla. Students from FAMU, Florida State University, and Tallahassee Community College, held an early voting rally at the courthouse. (AP Photo/Phil Coale)But Matthew Segal, a junior at Kenyon College in 2006, was still disappointed that the youth voting rate lagged significantly behind the national rate and incidents of voter suppression on campuses marred elections. He was disgusted not only with low youth voter turnout, but also with "backwards election policies" that disenfranchised young voters. He also took note universities were failing to teach students the importance of civic participation. So Segal and a group of Kenyon students founded the Student Association for Voter Empowerment to "increase accessibility for young voters." Interest in the organization spread quickly to other schools, and SAVE plans to launch chapters at 19 campuses around the country this year.
"It’s a travesty how few young people are voting," Segal said. "We’re being extolled for our increased participation, but it’s a problem when only about a quarter of young people are putting their two cents in to govern the direction of our country with our futures at stake."
Several nonpartisan organizations have tried to boost youth voter turnout through registration drives on campuses and mobilization campaigns. Leading up to the 2006 elections, for example, the Student PIRGs‘ New Voters Project registered 75,000 students to vote and made 94,000 "personalized Get Out the Vote reminders," according to its website. But Segal insists these efforts alone will not solve low participation rates.
"These organizations have good intentions but they don’t necessarily realize the extensive work we need to do," Segal said. "They have an antiquated approach of getting as many people registered as possible, but that’s not going to alter a person’s ideology to make him or her a lifelong participant in the electoral system."
Segal believes the key to increasing youth civic participation is reforming the electoral process and the education system, so SAVE focuses on removing barriers in election laws and enforcement which impede young people from exercising their right to vote, and on encouraging "thoughtful and strategic analysis prior to voting" through civics education both in and out of the classroom.
To do this, SAVE hosted a "townhall forum" July 31 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. where a handful of former U.S. representatives and cabinet members from both parties spoke with about 30 students to talk about the "general problem of civic disengagement that faces today’s youth" and a range of political issues. The forum is a model for similar events that SAVE chapters will host on campuses around the country this year.
"We don’t just want to get a lot of young people to vote; we want an educated populace," Segal said. He proposes that universities incorporate seminars on "how to be a political participant" into freshman orientation and register students to vote when they arrive on campus.
"If you make registration easier, it takes power away from partisan figures,” Segal said. “When partisan officials try to make voting political, they’re using the American people as a casualty in the voting process.”
Segal knows from firsthand experience. In 2004, Segal was one of hundreds of Kenyon students who waited as long as 10 hours to vote. The campus polling station had just two voting machines, and one malfunctioned. SAVE hosted an unofficial student-led hearing on election irregularities July 25 in the House Judiciary Committee Room. Eight students testified before members of Congress about obstacles impeding students from registering and voting as well as the uncertainty surrounding vote counting and verification.
Zach Pilchen, student body president at The College of William & Mary, where he will be a junior this fall, testified that when several W & M students decided to run for city council in Williamsburg, Va.—the college’s home base—the local registrar developed a residency questionnaire specifically targeted at students. The registrar determined the students running for office could not establish residency and were ineligible to vote under Virginia law. Pilchen described other efforts to keep students from the polls, such as preventing students with on-campus addresses from registering, and recounted how he was charged a processing fee to see if he was eligible to vote.
"The worst thing about the entire situation in Williamsburg is that this blatant voter suppression was and still is legal in Virginia," Pilchen said. "Gaping loopholes in the law leave room for registrars to abuse their authority by cherry-picking voters as they please."
Pilchen’s testimony illustrated just one of a series of voter suppression efforts aimed at students in Virginia and around the country. SAVE is teaming with election reform organizations like Common Cause and FairVote to push for policies which would protect against these suppression tactics and "ensure full electoral participation" among youth voters.
A number of states are taking steps in the right direction, adopting measures to limit the political activity of state officials who run elections. These regulations are sorely needed in states like Ohio, where in 2004 then-Secretary of State Ken Blackwell served simultaneously as chief elections official and co-chair of President Bush’s Ohio re-election campaign. Many pointed to this conflict of interest as an explanation for why polling places on or near college campuses were deprived of adequate numbers of functioning voting machines, creating waits of up to 11 hours around the state.
Of course, even if local, state, and federal governments adopted the policies SAVE advocates, such as legalizing Election Day Registration to combat the fact that registration deadlines disproportionately exclude young people from the electoral process, there would still be a need for voter mobilization efforts. Indeed, looking to next year’s presidential election, it seems that while SAVE’s proposed "National Electoral Awareness Day" for public schools to teach students about the electoral process may help educate future voters, traditional GOTV operations are a more pressing priority for 2008.
Thanks to youth voter mobilization campaigns, voter turnout more than doubled in the 36 precincts where nonpartisan organizations like the Student PIRGs‘ New Voters Project targeted young voters in 2006. The average turnout in those precincts increased by 157 percent over 2002; the increase in ballots cast by voters under 30 was six times higher than the national average.
Sujatha Jahagirdar, program director for the New Voters Project, expects the positive trend in electoral participation to continue. "We found the most effective strategy in turning out young voters is engaging them one-on-one, peer-to-peer, and we’ll use that strategy [in 2008]," Jahagirdar said. "Youth voter turnout will continue to increase and you can expect students to come out in record numbers. It’s going to be very exciting that young people will have an increased voice in our democracy."
Kathleen Barr, research and media director for Young Voter Strategies, a coalition of 15 groups like the New Voters Project and Rock the Vote, said it was "far too early to tell" whether turnout would continue to rise. But she said she is optimistic young voters will "carry the momentum" from 2006 as political parties begin to acknowledge young people as an important voting bloc, noting that three presidential campaigns have hired full-time youth outreach directors.
Barr noted that nonpartisan organizations spent just $40 million in youth-oriented outreach campaigns in 2004 while political parties and advocacy groups spent $3.9 billion on the presidential and congressional elections. "If the campaigns invested 1 percent [of their funds] in young voters, many of whom are helping with the campaigns, it could make a really big difference," Barr said.
Jahagirdar thinks the key is for campaigns to engage young voters. "What’s most helpful in ensuring that young people will turn out is for candidates to engage young people in the issues they care about," she said.
In an attempt to get presidential candidates to address issues that are important to students, such as college affordability and climate change, the New Voters Project has launched the "What’s Your Plan?" campaign. “What’s Your Plan?” challenges candidates to approach young voters "not just with big smiles and empty rhetoric, but with substance."
Students Win Right to Wear ‘Jesus is Not a Homophobe’ shirts; Survey Says College Is Too Easy
Lobbying 101
Sneak Peek: #CPNC12 Speakers Revealed