voting

From www.juniorpolitics.com

I remember having a conversation months ago with someone on politics in general. I don't remember the exact topic, but it had to do with current events, and eventually also Iraq. In any case, she was mentioning how her parents knew a certain Republican official, and that if he ran for president, her parents would vote for him. And so would she. Naturally, I ask her why. And she can't tell me.

We start to discuss other issues. I bring out all sorts of reasons as to why the Iraq war has nothing to do with terrorism in and of itself. She can't counter any of my arguments, as she has no arguments of her own to make. Does this mean she believes in the Iraq war due to false misconceptions and a blind backing of her family? Of course. I'm not saying don't support your family on issues. But come on, even I would want a reason as to why my family thinks a certain way, and if I have to defend that reasoning, I would definitely want to be prepared for it.

I can't stand ignorance. There are people all over the United States who vote for the red candidate just because he's republican or the blue candidate just because he or she (let's face it, when I see a woman running for president on the republican ticket, I'll correct the other side's pronoun) is a democrat. Even if you yourself belong to a particular party, that does not mean you can opt out of knowing why you're voting for that particular side. Yes, belonging to a party and voting for that party's candidate means you are voting for a certain set of values the party always brings with it. But, not all candidates are alike. No one can ever convince me of that. Politics does not produce robots (although some politicians do seem that way). I had better get a clear answer to why you support or do not support a particular candidate, or I do not want you voting.

That brings me to another complaint of mine, not voting. Some who are ignorant choose not to vote. My solution? Read up and vote. Don't just stay ignorant. You have no right to complain about the current state of affairs in America if you never vote. You've basically forfeited your opinion when you do, and you have left your fate in the hands of the rest of the American public. I, for one, could never do that. Quite simply I don't trust anyone else in making the correct decision. I could never give up that kind of control. There are those of you who say it's pointless anyway, and that your vote doesn't really matter. Well, let's see what happens if 200 million people in America choose not to vote on election day. Let's see how much our opinions really don't matter...

Not voting also happens with those who are incredibly opinionated. I'm talking about my generation of course. Those who talk the talk on college campuses and don't actually take their opinions to the polls. This I feel is incredibly hypocritical. As far as I'm concerned, you're not allowed to have any sort of opinion at all if you let America decide its fate for itself. It's like complaining about a current state of affairs and not doing anything about it. It's like complaining that your house is messy and yet you do not bother to clean it. It's like... well I'll stop there. I think everyone gets the point.

So here are some of my suggestions. If you don't know anything about what's going on at all in American politics, learn. Don't spew out some crap that it's not important or pointless, because that's only true with that sort of mindset. If you don't vote, vote. If you have any sort of opinion at all, learn what the other side has to say about the issue, make up your mind, and then go to the polls. Otherwise, I don't want to hear any complaining, and I certainly don't want to hear what you think, because if you don't think it's important enough of an opinion to vote on it, then neither do I.

The youth voters have a lot to bring onto the table, and we could have just as big a voice as any other age group in America. The politics of today will affect us for years and years to come, isn't it about time we do something about it?

If it is at all possible, Ralph Nader made himself even more irrelevant yesterday. Emphasis mine:

Consumer activist Ralph Nader brought his independent presidential campaign to Chicago on Tuesday, railing against state election laws that he complained have prevented him from gaining ballot access and criticizing the news media for trivializing campaign coverage.

“It’s almost painful to watch the Sunday opinion shows and to see reporters around the round table, wallowing in this tactical speculation [and] commentary on the seriousness of gaffes and who can take a shot of beer in the most authentic manner,” Nader said at a news conference at the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum.

Nader, who called Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain the “corporate candidates,” repeated his calls for universal health care, a minimum living wage of $10 an hour, slashing the Pentagon budget in half and shifting more of the burden of taxation onto polluters and financial speculators.

The 74-year-old Nader acknowledged the odds of his social justice candidacy winning in November are long but, quoting the iconoclastic journalist I.F. Stone, Nader said, “You have to be willing to lose.”

When asked if he sees young people playing an influential role in November, Nader said no. “If there was a (military) draft they would. They sure would,” he said.

For a man who spawned a student movement, it's pretty shocking how out of touch he is with today's youth.

Fair Vote has an interesting piece up giving a good explanation as to why young voters turnout in lower numbers than older voters. The gist is this - young voters face more barriers to registration than do older voters and are thus registered at lower rates. Young voters who are registered turn out at comparable rates to older voters:

The Registration Gap
While young people are paying attention to this election and voting in record numbers, there is still a worry that come November, candidates who rely on the youth vote will be disappointed. It’s not because young people don’t want to vote, it’s because there are too many bureaucratic hurdles preventing youth participation. In 2004, 72% of the general population was registered to vote and 88.5% actually voted. In contrast, only 58% of 18 to 24-year-olds were registered, but surprisingly, over 81% showed up on Election Day. This shows that there is not really a participation gap, but there is definitely a registration gap.

The National Conference on Citizenship has released their 2007 Civic Health Index. The main finding, reported here by Peter Levine, one of the co-authors, and covered on Yahoo News by Ron Fournier, is that there is a "civic core" of 36 million Americans who do the majority of volunteering and participating in civic activities (in addition to voting). The report also finds that volunteering and civic engagement have dropped recently, finally returning to their pre-9/11 levels.

When it comes to Millennials, the report is encouraging. It notes that participation at the ballot box by Millennials continues to rise, and suggests that Millennials are mimicking the civic-mindedness of the Greatest Generation (the report actually tags Gen X and the Boomers with responsibility for the overall decline in civic participation in the last 30 years). When it comes to overall trust, the report finds that Millennials are less trusting of individual actors, but more trusting of government and institutions, and three quarters of Millennials express distrust of the mainstream media as a reliable reporter of information.

What I found very interesting was that of all age groups, Millennials are the most likely to feel that they have little power and few avenues for civic engagement that could result in positive change. More than any other groups, they are looking for those opportunities to further increase their level of participation. Yet at the same time, they are one of the least likely of groups to use the internet to express opinions about politics and take civic actions. This is due primarily to the fact that older generations use email as a political tool at a FAR higher rate than Millennials.

I'm not sure exactly what questions the researchers asked to come to these conclusions and produce the two charts below. It may in fact be that pairing these next two charts is like comparing apples and oranges, but I wonder what this means about Millennial participation in something like MoveOn, the most obvious organization to allow its members to participate and express themselves politically using email. At the very least it is indicative of a disconnect between what Millennials are doing online (IMing, blogging, social networking) and what they regard as effective political action for their community. It seems we still have a long way to go in making those into effective vehicles for political participation.

Matthew Segal is the founder and executive director of the Student Association for Voter Empowerment — (SAVE), a student-led, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to removing access barriers and increasing civic education for young people. He is also a senior fellow and national challenge coordinator, overseeing policy and lobbying efforts with the Roosevelt Institution — the nation’s first student think-tank.

I must confess: when reading Thomas Friedman’s article “Generation Q” (on 10/10/2007), I couldn’t help but think of a lyric from Bob Dylan’s song “Troubled and I Don’t Know Why,” in which Dylan sings, “Oh what did the newspaper tell?/ Well, it rolled in the door/ And it laid on the floor, /Saying, ‘Things ain't going so well.’” And with all due to respect to Bob Dylan, the times are not a-changin’ in regards to media coverage. Now more than ever, the media can’t wait to uncover the latest scandal, blast someone’s slippage of words, or report on the latest celebrity murder trial.

In other words, it’s easy to talk about how deep a hole we’ve been dug in, it’s easy to carp our optimism when times seem like we should be down and dejected, but in truth, it’s the pervasive negativity of the media that disillusions our peer group—stifling political participation. Mr. Friedman wonders why volunteering in the Gulf Coast region and signing up for Teach for America is so popular. It is because, unlike in politics, youth can enter these fields without risking media annihilation or partisan smear.

What Mr. Friedman has failed to notice about Generation “Q” is that our blogging, think-tanking, and social networking frame news more positively. On these “passive” websites, youth encourage one another, read each other’s thoughts, and spread the word about an interesting service project or a voter registration drive they want help administering. We are more productive than ever before; filling an auditorium is doable by simply creating a Facebook event, rather than spending hours taping up posters all around campus—not to mention the waste of paper. Websites like Facebook are not the activism itself, but merely the means for mobilizing such activism.

So let me ask this question: why don’t we see a story in the New York Times about college students and their efforts to bring organic food to their dining halls? Why doesn’t Fox News run a story about high school students pressing their administration to use renewable energy sources? Where is the news coverage on the newly established youth-led non-profit organizations?

More significant than the possible answers to these questions is the need for these stories to receive increased coverage. Such publicity would inspire more young people, stir more creative juices, and launch more activism. However, in order to achieve this, the media needs more courage— the courage to stop writing about tendentious political gossip and start celebrating youth innovation and creative accomplishment.

James Durbin at Tech Republican and Stuart Rothenberg are both up in arms about Rock the Vote and it's "liberal" message this week. Durbin is concerned that Republicans aren't reaching out appropriately to young voters - evidenced by the lack of conservative partners listed on the Rock the Vote website and the predominance of "liberal" messages on MySpace. Rothenberg is flailing about somewhat wildly, both upset that Rock the Vote talked about the draft in its 2004 campaign while simultaneously saying that fear of a draft is a losing message with diminishing returns for Democrats (who Rothenberg also equates with Rock the Vote).

I actually agree with Durbin - Republicans are dropping the ball online among young people just as much as they're losing the money and organizing war online against the progressive blogosphere. Rothenberg has a few valid points, though he misses the extreme contradiction inherent in the conservative position on the draft - the Bush/Republican strategy for the war requires more troops and a draft is the only way to get enough of them without breaking the military beyond repair. If conservatives don't want a draft, they're ultimately unserious about supporting the troops and "winning" the war. If they do want a draft, they energize young voters and the parents of young voters against Republicans. It's a lose-lose situation for them.

But all of this is irrelevant. Here's the thing that both Durbin and Rothenberg alike are missing: As so many Conservatives and pundits alike are fond of saying, this isn't about one tactical decision or another, this is about our values as Americans. And right now, the values of the Millennial Generation are heading in the opposite direction of the values of the Republican Party. Let me remind readers of the recent findings by Democracy Corps:

On issue after issue, in poll after poll (see here and here), young voters are aligning more with Democrats than Republicans, and those are value-based decisions. Millennial voters support a multilateralist foreign policy, we support policies that protect the environment and civil liberties. Not even mentioned in this Democracy Corps chart are cultural wedge issues like choice and gay marriage, both of which are supported by more younger people than not. Just to twist the knife in a little more, let's remember the fact that Millennials are the most diverse and tolerant generation in American history - two things that don't mesh well with the GOP base.

This is why Durbin is missing the point with his tactical discussions about "going where the youth are," and Rothenberg's commentary about the draft misses the forest for the trees. Just as the tens of millions of dollars the conservative machine dumps into youth outreach and bench-building each year aren't winning them any converts among Millennials (conservatives outspend progressives about 5-1 on youth outreach), showing up on MySpace or partnering with Rock the Vote isn't a panacea or Republican ills and it doesn't matter one whit whether or not Rock the Vote or Democrats play the draft card. It's the values, stupid. It's your policies.

(On a side not - despite Durbin's claims - you can't wait until these kids get older and "age into conservatism." That doesn't really happen. Partisanship is a habit (pdf). Lose them now, and chances are you've lost them for the rest of their voting lives.)

This is why the most interesting thing that I see happening right now on the GOP side of the aisle in youth organizing is Republican Youth Majority, a pro-choice, pro-environment, fiscally conservative organization that is trying to rebuild the Republican brand among Millennial voters. Tactics aside, if the Republicans are going to retain any semblance of competitiveness among this new generation of voters, they're going to have to realign themselves on a number of issues to be more in touch with the values of the Millennial Generation. It's going to be a long, hard slog as they've got 8 years of a Bush Presidency and a campaign/policy apparatus that is fundamentally at odds with those values, but I think that if they can become sustainable, this is the group to watch over the next couple years for hints of a Republican revitalization among young voters. Personally, I'd be thrilled to see the next generation of Republicans move left on these issues.

Update: Also, one more quick thought. At the end of the day, isn't it setting the bar a little low to ask that people just vote? If your end goal is Civic Participation - which is the express intention of these ads - isn't involvement in a political party or in some form of political activism the real end goal?

I appreciate that folks want to be nonpartisan, or that the particular tax model they've chosen makes ads like these possible, but there is a trade-off with effectiveness that I'm not sure is worth it.
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So The Ad Council is running a series of new ads in support of that great inherent good, Civic Participation. They are lame.

Vote to get good Karma? How about vote because there are serious issues at stake that impact your life on a daily basis. Voting because it is an inherent good just isn't a compelling sell to someone who isn't already heading to the voting booth on election day.

As a nonprofit, these ads are probably produced pro-bono by fancy Madison Ave ad agencies, but that's an expensive in-kind donation. And they still cost millions to run on TV. I would hope that the folks who support the work of the Ad Council have statistics showing that these types of ads actually do increase turnout and other forms of civic participation, but I can't help but think that money could be better spent.

Update: Over at the Rock the Vote blog, Lindsey B. notes that the video was created by Lon Seidman, YDA member and former campaign manager to Joe Courtney. I guess they know very well the power of young Dems to swing elections in the state.
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The Young Democrats of Connecticut show everyone how its done. Not only did they make some creative user-generated content that shed light on a policy issue highly relevant to young voters, but they got the story to jump into the mainstream media where it was covered on Connecticut TV news, in local newspapers and blogs.

I love the quote from Republican Larry Cafero: "I was in favor of the concept. I voted yes, I ran into a meeting in the backroom, came back, said "oh my god I vote green!" I ran back, changed it red." Three men in a smoke-filled room, anyone?

I'm curious about the 14 Democrats who voted "no" or didn't vote at all. The bill only fell 9 votes short. CT YDA should do something similar to apply pressure to those Democrats to vote the right way next time. After Joe Courtney's victory in CT - which was primarily youth-fueled - they probably have the muscle to do that.

Update: I've got this cross posted at MyDD and Daily Kos. Please give it a recommend.

We've talked a lot lately about young voters. How they turned out in near record numbers, and broke heavily democratic. Pollsters, bloggers and strategists are also busy promoting the fact that if a someone votes for a party 3 times (before they turn 30),they are likely to become a life-long voter for that party. The new conventional wisdom is this: "youth voted Democratic in 2004 and in 2006. If we get them in 2008, we've locked a generation the size of the baby boomers for life."

While technically correct, there are some assumptions in that statement that need to be challenged.

First, I think that the "2/3 shooting for 3/3" frame is the wrong mindset with which to approach the upcoming election. "Young voters" are not a solid block. The category is fluid by its very nature. I'm a cusp Millennial - 28 years old. After one more election I will no longer be a "young voter." From now on, every election will be 1/3, 2/3, or 3/3 for somebody, and we should create institutions and strategies that organize around that principle. Second, we need to recognize that, despite our recent successes, our current methods are inadequate to that task and adjust accordingly. Young voters still volunteer in their communities far more than they participate in politics. We can do better. And if we do, we'll win even bigger. In whatever strategies we adopt, our goal should be closing that "volunteer gap."

So let's talk about this.