Acces vs. Apathy: 80% of Registered Youth Voted in 2004

Last week we hit back at ABC and John Stossel pretty hard over their willful misrepresentations of the youth vote as "too dumb to vote." Today, over at the Rock the Vote blog, Kat Barr has an excellent piece posted about another youth vote meme that is taking hold in the media: young people register in droves, but then fail to vote.

Like so many other media narratives about the youth vote, this just isn't true. Here's what Kat has to say:

Now, when I read that, I got suspicious. I know that in 2004, 81.6% of registered 18-29 year olds voted, a turnout rate not low by any definition.

Of course, not all of those were new voters, so I decided to check it out a bit further.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2004:

* 83.3% of registered 18-year-olds voted;
* 79% of registered 19-year-olds voted;
* 81% of registered 20-year-olds voted;
* 82.3% of registered 21-year-olds voted.

Nearly all of these voters were "new" by virtue of age, and all were new to a presidential election.

What's the lesson? Whether young or new, or young and new, if a person is registered to vote, they are very likely to cast a ballot.

So to all the skeptics I want to say - knock it off! You're telling the easy story, the "will those darn kids really vote?" - but not the factual story. Don't believe me, believe the facts: you can be sure that those darn kids will indeed overwhelm the polls come November 4th.

You read that right - over 80% of registered youth voted on election day in 2004. Here's what that looks like in graph form, across the entire electorate (click for a larger image. Courtesy of Chris Kennedy, also of Rock the Vote.):

Kat's last point can't be stressed enough. Most journalists are telling the easy story, not the factual story. The vast majority of young voters who are registered to vote show up and cast a ballot on election day. As I wrote in The Nation back in August, lower than average turnout at the polls among young voters is about access, not apathy:

Young voters face more barriers to participating in the political process than any other demographic in the electorate except perhaps ex-felons. Some of these factors are structural and can be attributed to lifestyle issues. Others are deliberate attempts to keep young voters from the polls. Here's a look at how our voting system disenfranchises our youngest citizens:

[...]

Contrast all this to the situation of an older voter. Older voters have had many more opportunities to register. They are generally stationary, having put down roots in a community and thus do not need to change their registration. They have conveniently located polling places with short wait times. Their residency or eligibility is rarely challenged, and campaigns spend tens to hundreds of millions of dollars each cycle to reach out and encourage older voters to go to the polls. Is it any wonder that youth turnout lags behind?

Look at this problem from a marketing perspective. If you were Nike and you were selling a sneaker, you would do whatever it took to get your product in front of your target audience, get them into the store, and buy your product. You wouldn't ignore your target market and then whine about the fact that no one was buying your shoes. The same is true for young people and voting. If we want them to get to the polls, we have to put our resources behind efforts to register them, and we have to make our product (voting/democracy) readily and easily available to them.

Once registered, young voters show up in numbers comparable to the rest of the electorate. That's why all of these new voters that Obama is bringing into the system matter so much - because it is highly likely that 80% or more of those newly registered voters will turnout on November 4th.

This is why the work of all the groups Kat highlights was important in 2004, and it's why the work of groups like Rock the Vote, HeadCount, the Bus Federation, YDA, and The League are so vital in this election cycle, and will continue to be so in the future. They increase access for young people in what can often be an intimidating and occasionally opaque system. It's also why, coming off a winning electoral season, I'd like to see a lot of energy thrown behind Election Day Registration initiatives in more states to increase the ease with which young people can register and participate in the political process.