Journalist Cheat Sheet: Eleven Tips for Reporting the Youth Vote

Update: I've added in another tip (now # 1).
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It’s getting rather tiring, correcting one shoddy media report on the youth vote after another. This really came to a head this weekend when, less than 24 hours after forcing a young UNLV student to ask Hillary Clinton whether she preferred Diamonds or Pearls, CNN un-ironically aired a piece during The Situation Room that made a mockery of young voters and their participation in our electoral process.

So I created this “cheat sheet” for journalists. Basically it’s a listing of all the most common mistakes that the media makes when reporting on young voters. Enjoy. Spread widely.

Journalist Cheat Sheet: 11 Tips for Reporting on the Youth Vote:

Tip #1: The youth vote is not synonymous with students. In fact, students make up only a small part of the eligible youth vote. Only 21% of all 18-29 year olds are currently attending a college or university. That means that when you report on "students", you are leaving out the other 79% of all the individuals that make up the "youth vote." These people serve in our military, are struggling to raise families - and yes, have very different concerns from college students. I understand that makes it difficult for you to cram them into a cookie-cutter story about student aid activism and tuition costs, but you do them and your readers and our democracy a disservice when you limit your coverage to students.

Source: Current Population Survey

Tip #2: Stop saying that “Howard Dean courted young voters and the youth failed to show up.” Fact of the matter is, youth participation quadrupled at the 2004 Iowa Caucus, they just didn’t vote for Dean. In case you missed it, young people voted in higher than usual numbers and were 17% of all participants.

Source: Pew Trusts

Tip #3: This tip is directly related to Tip #2. Your cognitive dissonance w/r/t the 2004 Iowa caucus springs from the fact that young people did not vote in a monolithic block like you expected. That’s called reality, and it is your job to report it accurately. Young voters chose John Kerry over Howard Dean by almost 2-1. If any candidate in Iowa was the “youth candidate” in the 2004 primary, it was John Kerry, and he won the nomination.

Source: CNN Exit Polling

Tip #4: The idea that “young people don’t vote” is patently ridiculous. In 2004, 49% of all voters 18-29 went to the polls. That’s millions of voters. In fact, a report by the Harvard Institute of Politics stated that more voters 18-29 went to the polls (20.7 million) than did voters over 65, the so-called reliable seniors (19.4 million).

To spell this out, we may still vote at lower rates than the rest of the electorate, but there are more of us. Millennials are the largest living American generation. In 2004, we were 17% of the electorate. It’s estimated that we may well be 25% in 2008, and by 2015, we will be over 30% of all voters. That makes our support valuable, and that’s why the Obama, Clinton and Edwards campaigns all have full-time youth outreach staff.

Sources: Harvard Institute of Politics (pdf), CIRCLE (pdf), Young Voter Strategies (pdf)

Tip #5: If you insist on reporting the same old story that young people vote at a lower rate than the rest of the electorate, then you have an obligation to also inform your readers/viewers/listeners that youth turnout has increased for 3 years straight, and is at its highest level in over a decade. You also have an obligation to note that in 2006 the youth vote swung a number of important federal races, including pushing Democratic candidates Jon Tester, Jim Webb, and Joe Courtney over the top.

Source: Historical voting patterns (pdf), Impact on Races (pdf), Midterm Turnout (pdf).

Tip #6: If you are going to report on low-turnout among young voters, you also have an obligation to note that young people face more barriers to voting than do older voters. We move more frequently, requiring us to re-register sometimes on a yearly basis, on campus we face a lack of voting machines and long lines, and many university towns actively discourage and try to prevent students from voting.

Source: League of Conservation Voters Education Fund

Tip #7: There are simple fixes to the problems outlined in #6 – election day and same-day registration and mail-in voting are two such fixes that can be applied at the state level. These have been proven to bump youth turnout by as much as 14%!!!!! It would be nice if you reported on them occasionally.

Source: CIRCLE

Tip #8: Young voters will participate if they are asked to, particularly by a peer. This is proven. But the system stopped asking long ago by removing resources and manpower away from young voter outreach. Only in recent years have organizations – and a few campaigns – begin to reengage young voters in any serious way. The result is three straight years in which youth turnout increased. In plain terms: young voters are not apathetic. Rather, the system fails to engage them in any meaningful way.

Source: Young Voter Strategies, Voter Mobilization Tactics

Tip #9: Stop reporting on “celebrity activism” as the Rosetta Stone for understanding the youth vote. This is a Boomer and Gen-X construction created for a broadcast TV culture of the 80s and 90s. Today’s young voters are interested in peer-to-peer communication and networked action. From Facebook to on the ground, peer to peer organizing at club, bars, barbershops and apartment canvassing, the most effective, and sustainable developments in youth organizing in the past five years have come from new, grassroots organizations doing peer to peer organizing on the ground or online. Stop reporting on celebrities and start doing the work of talking to and reporting on the activities of these organizations. Good places to start include:

Forward Montana, The Oregon Bus Project, New Era Colorado, Young Democrats of America, and The League of Young Voters.

There are many more, but let’s do this in baby steps. Start with these and we’ll work out way deeper into youth organizing together.

Tip #10: Related to #9, “talking to young voters” is not code for “dumbing down.” We understand issues. We have thoughts on those issues. We’re yelling loudly for the “adults” to take action on those issues. See: Iraq, Global Warming, Global Poverty, Darfur, and college aid. Stop stereotyping us in your reporting by spotlighting frivolous questions.

Moreover, and this is very important, you REALLY need to stop force-feeding us these fluff questions in national forums (see: Mac vs. PC and Diamonds vs. Pearls). If you are going to say that we are frivolous, you shouldn’t be enabling - or worse, instigating - that behavior. This habit is doing nothing to build your credibility with a younger audience that is already abandoning you for the internet. So following this rule is not only good for Democracy, it is good for your bottom line.

Source For more on issues, visit the Harvard Institute of Politics for their annual surveys.

Tip #11: Related to #10, we do not live in a Newtonian Universe. We live in an Einsteinian Universe. Just as the act of observing something changes it, your reporting on the youth vote has an effect on the youth vote. It effects how campaigns, staffers and consultants perceive young voters. When you fail to accurately report on increasing turnout or the impact of youth on an election, these individuals continue to believe that the youth vote is a waste of time. This feeds a vicious cycle in which campaigns put less money into youth outreach, meaning young voters are less likely to turnout because they are not being asked/engaged.

You are not neutral observers. There are no neutral observers. We all exist in a self-referential ecosystem. You are culpable here. With great power comes great responsibility. We rely on you to use it wisely. Please start living up to those not unreasonable expectations.