Rock the Vote

Rock the Vote and MySpace released a new joint competition this week geared to increase voter registration online with their online widget.

According to CNET

Here's how it works: from now through August 14, bands with profiles on MySpace can install a tool on their pages that lets their fans register to vote. The first 25 bands to have 150 people register to vote through the tool will have their music featured in custom playlists on TouchTunes digital jukeboxes--you know, the kind you see in bars--and then the grand prize winner will get to be the opening act at Rock the Vote's "Ballot Bash" concert at the Democratic National Convention in Denver on August 25. They'll also get some new guitars courtesy of Gibson...

MySpace is hoping the contest will spark the interest of some of the many small-time bands that have a presence on the site and have used it to build up loyal fan bases. "Not only will the competition link MySpace's thriving music division with an active and successful field effort but it will also offer small bands, a core constituency of MySpace, the chance to open up for top talent," Lee Brenner, executive producer of political programming and director of the "Impact" political channel on MySpace, said in a release Tuesday. "This competition with Rock the Vote is furthering the democratization of music and the ability of bands to engage their fans through MySpace."

My apologies for this blog being a little short. I'm at a training thing today - promise to make it up with something more substantial over the weekend!

Kevin has talked about YDA's Pledge to Vote campaign in reflecting on the Peer-to-peer network that is created. There are also a number of similar organizations that are partnering in this effort.

You heard Mike give props to a great registration drive at Bonnaroo with HeadCount where they got 2,000 people to pledge to vote. The Youth Voter Collective is doing a pledge to vote campaign heck even Oprah has a pledge to vote operation, The Human Rights Campaign has also launched a Pledge to Vote campaign, as the famous social justice advocacy group headed by Rev. Jim Wallis, Sojourners has launched a Vote out Poverty campaign asking people to pledge to vote.

But this week Rock the Vote announced their version of it with the Rock the Vote Application on Facebook (must be signed in). This enables folks, in true Facebook Application style, to invite people to join in via FB. This translates to a fantastic GOTV operation where people will get harassed on Facebook (I mean that in a good way).

I'm curious if this application harvests email addresses and personal contact information. I'm thinking that they will send you notes on facebook, potentially text you, and if you say its cool they'll send you emails as well. Which... hey, if you can get your friends to do it, could prove to be significantly helpful.

Also on Facebook, is the Election 2008 Event, that I've seen for the last several months. Someone set up an event and they are trying to get people to say that they are attending the election (aka voting). Such an awesome idea! This too will remind you when the date gets closer! So far 628,035 confirmed guests... damn... If all of those people turn out, plus the people who aren't on facebook, we'll have a nice generational impact. Go team!

I wanted to call your attention to two new handbooks about online politics that came out this week:

Colin Delaney of the excellent ePolitics updated his monster Online Politics 101 handbook (50+ pages). It's an excellent primer on the basics of online organizing - from Search Engine Optimization and online advertising to blogging. It's lacking in case studies to illustrate his points, but if you want to make sure your online organizing/media campaign is following basic best practices, it's an invaluable guide.

Rock the Vote also released a much slimmer guide to New Media Tactics. The guidebook focuses heavily on tactics Rock the Vote employs, including how to best make use of their voter registration widget online.

I just received an email from Rock the Vote noting that they have withdrawn their support and participation from the conservative-leaning Youth Entitlement Summit I blogged about on Friday. They will not be participating in today's events.

Good for them.

Rock the Vote made a name for itself in 1992. First by protecting the voting rights of students during the New Hampshire primary, and then by running a coordinated field and media campaign that helped elect President Clinton and substantially raised youth turnout for the first time since 1972. One year later, they helped pass the Motor Voter law. That was the peak of Rock the Vote as an organization.

Over the course of the next decade, two things happened. First, Rock the Vote's field apparatus atrophied to nothing during the mid 90's as the organization morphed into a media vehicle. Concurrently, that media vehicle became the biggest brand in youth politics, rivaled only briefly by P. Diddy's "Vote or Die" initiative in 2004.

Despite holding the biggest name brand in youth politics, youth turnout declined in 1996 and 2000, and a lot of political minded folks didn't think Rock the Vote was getting the job done. As described in my book, Youth to Power, the vacuum left in youth organizing by the failures of Rock the Vote in part inspired the boom in youth organizing that occurred between 2003 and 2007.

Since then, Rock the Vote has struggled to revitalize itself and live up to its brand, and there's been some hype that this year we would finally see a new, more effective Rock the Vote. What that would look like, exactly, was always been pretty vague, but it's now starting to come into focus. Here's the latest on what Rock the vote is up to in 2008:

• So far, their online voter registration widget (which we use here at Future Majority) has helped 637,859 young people download voter registration materials. If their completion rate from 2004 applies (68%), that would mean Rock the Vote has registered 433,744 new voters under the age of 30. They're goal for the year is 2 million.
• Like other organizations this cycle (MTV, Huffington Post), Rock the Vote is experimenting with citizen journalism. Just this week the organization announced that they had selected 5 young journalists to participate in their "Rock the Trail" program. Congratulations are in order for my friend, Sarah Burris, who was selected as one of Rock the Vote's citizen journalists. The program promises to give its participants some exposure via major media partners like the Washington Post. Citizen journalism - particularly as a way to build a youth community - is still an unproven concept, but it's encouraging knowing that folks like Sarah will be out on the trail covering the election and telling the real story of the youth vote, which the mainstream media often confuses with the latest shiny object (P. Diddy! Facebook!).
• The organization recently issues a "Young Voter Platform," in support of a variety of youth issues and value statements including equal opportunity, sustainability, equal representation and tolerance. It's a rather milquetoast list, vague to the point of being inconsequential. Rock the Vote is a non-partisan organization, but that just means they can't endorse candidates. They can take strong stands on particular issues, and in 2004 they did, running a hard-hitting anti-Iraq War campaign focused on the draft that ruffled more than a few GOP feathers. All the issues and values laid out in Rock the Vote's Young Voter Platform are important, but some solutions to these problems are better than others. It would be nice to see Rock the Vote come down in favor of concrete ideas supported by the majority of Millennials. That would be truly meaningful coming from an organization that speaks for young voters in the media. Instead, what they've produced is a list-building tool (sign the petition!) that can be used for GOTV purposes in the fall. That's not at all insignificant, but it's something less than it could be.
• Rock the Vote is starting to reengage field work. Sort of. After years with little more than an ad-hoc crew of volunteers, there are signs that the field program will be somewhat revitalized this year, if not yet a core component of the organizations work. Rock the Vote intends to put street teams on the ground in major battleground states, and there are rumors they will hire staff field organizers to coordinate a ground strategy. Rock the Vote also recently announced a partnership with Head Count, a nonprofit voter registration group that works at concerts. The groups will partner on this summer's Lollapalooza and Rock the Bells festivals.
• Rock the Vote's mobile program, which will issue text message reminders about when and where to vote has garnered over 40,000 participants thus far. Such reminders are proven to bump youth turnout 4 - 5%.
• As we've come to expect, the organization will also run a large PSA campaign, though such campaigns have always struck me as being more about maintaining the Rock the Vote brand than getting young people to the polls. This recently kicked off with an ad by Christina Aguilera and her son, wrapped in an American flag, echoing the original PSA by Madonna that catapulted the organization into notoriety.

So what is the verdict? Is Rock the Vote rocking the vote in 2008?

Maybe.

The online voter registration widget is kicking ass and taking names considering how early it is in the cycle, and the revitalization of at least some field work on the part of the organization is an encouraging sign, even if we don't yet know how extensive Rock the Vote's GOTV work will be in the fall. As a young voter and a partisan, I find the Young Voter Platform to be a bit of a disappointment. I think they could take stronger stands on the issues while still staying within the limits of their tax designation. The groundwork seems to be there for Rock the Vote to be a much more significant and effective presence on the trail this year than in previous cycles, but the bar is higher as well, raised by Senator Obama's campaign and a dozen or more youth organizations that picked up the ball Rock the Vote dropped in the mid and late 90s. The potential is there for Rock the Vote to surpass it's peak during the early 90s. We'll just have to wait and see if - and how - they follow through.

On the Op-Ed page today, the New York Times is running a surprisingly information-free look back at "what went wrong" with the Clinton campaign. How bad is it? Apparently, Clinton lost because she is too much like Hermione Granger. Seriously. How bad is it? So bad that Mark Penn and Michael Kinsley offer the best of slim pickings. There was one bright light though.

Buried in the 10th paragraph of an 11 graph piece (the most column inches of any contributor), in which he argues that it's not his fault, Mark Penn says this:

Are there a lot of other things the campaign could have done differently? Of course. We should have taken on Mr. Obama more directly and much earlier, and we needed a different kind of operation to win caucuses and to retain the support of superdelegates. From more aggressively courting young people earlier to mobilizing the full power of women, there are things that could have been done differently.

Emphasis is mine. This is a far cry from Mark Penn at the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson dinner:

At least two of Hillary Clinton’s upper-echelon advisers, Mandy Grunwald and Mark Penn, were decidedly unimpressed .

“Our people look like caucus-goers,” Grunwald said, “and his people look like they are 18. Penn said they look like Facebook.”

Penn added, “Only a few of their people look like they could vote in any state.”

While the importance of young voters as a Democratic constituency is far from the only lesson to be gleaned from this primary campaign, it is an important one. Young Voters in Iowa were subjected to major outreach from the Obama campaign and from outside partisan and nonpartisan organizations including (but not limited to) the Young Voter PAC, Rock the Vote, the Young Democrats, and the Student PIRGs. As a result, they overperformed their share of the electorate and came out in equal numbers to the "reliable" senior demographic. That was the beginning of the end for Clinton.

Here's to hoping that other Democratic candidates down the ballot learn that lesson. And here's to hoping that they know that there are many resources available to their campaigns to help learn how to reach that audience. From live-blogging here at Future Majority, to working with organizations like Young Voter PAC and Rock the Vote, or local youth orgs that may be organizing in their state. Reaching young voters is not rocket science, and there are many folks willing to help you do it.

Rock the Vote and YDA are going international:

• PBS did a huge segment on the youth vote with Heather Smith of Rock the Vote, Sujatha Jahagirdar of PIRG, and three students each supporting one of the remaining candidates. For my money, Sujatha had the best line in the piece:
  
  But the real story here is that young people have been turning out for many election cycles. In fact, in 2004, youth turnout increased by more than 11 percent, which was almost triple the increase we saw in the general population.

  So what we hope we see this election cycle is the permanent death of the notion that young people don't vote and young people don't matter. - PBS

• The National Campus Voter Registration Project has launched Your Vote, Your Voice, a project to help students register their peers on campus. - Chronicle of Higher Education
• Scotty McClellan's new book is the talk of the town and everyone has blogged it today. For my money, Glenn Greenwald has the best take in this post which skewers the media reaction. - Salon
• All three remaining candidates have joined forces to release a (toothless) statement about Darfur. - TPM Election Central
• Clinton backers plan to protest at the game-deciding Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting this Saturday. - Washington Post
• With less than one week to go, Obama appears to be "banking" super delegates for a big announcement. - Political Wire
• Whatever happened to the Jena 6? - AlterNet
• The VA continues to downplay the seriousness of PTSD. - Vet Voice
• Declare Yourself has released a book in which celebrities discuss why they will vote. Not too sure how I feel about this. Seems a little silly and superficial, but if it sells copies and convinces people to go to the polls then yay on them. - Declare Yourself
• The latest craze at Oberlin College? Competitive sustainable living. - New York Times
• GRITtv interviews a soldier who was stop-lossed. - FireDogLake

Earlier today, the conservative Washington Times printed an op-ed by Suzanne Fields in which the author called young voters ignorant and don't understand policy or the great political debate of our time.

Kat Barr at Rock the Vote effectively demolishes the author's arguments in a response on the Rock the Vote blog:

But I'm very much going to take issue with the idea that young adults are too ignorant to grasp the big issues of the day. Given that today's 18-29 year olds are the most educated generation in American history, are reading the news at increasing levels, have access to the Internet and its vast resources in growing numbers, and are getting involved in issues and politics in ways we've not seen in decades - I'd say we're doing an OK job of being informed.

And speaking as the "young voter" (I'm 30) who wrote the post - I am well aware of the significance of the Knesset speech. I'm well aware that what happened at the Knesset was a remarkable departure from a 60-year-old standard originally agreed to by two venerable Americans, President Harry S. Truman and Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, to keep foreign policy criticisms between elected officials within our shores. As noted in a column in The Hill:

"It is a tradition for a sitting president not to confuse partisan politics with foreign policy. We can have intense debates within our borders, but we don’t carry them overseas. We especially do not air our partisanship in a politically charged atmosphere, such as the Israeli Knesset, where it may well inflame passions in the complex and dangerous environment of the Middle East. Yet that is exactly what President Bush did."

Speaking as one young(ish) voter, I can assure the columnist I get the importance of what happened last week. And I also get that foreign policy is complicated and that politics can be complicated. And I get that there are troubles in how our education system prepares us to understand these things.

Go read the whole thing.

Rock the Vote has been testing text message reminders and their influence on voter registration. They're finding that, when combined with their online voter registration tool, text message reminders to complete the registration process can boost registration rates by 4%:

Thousands of people download voter registration forms every day from Rock the Vote, but they don't necessarily know the voter registration deadline for their state. We're all busy and it can sometimes take people a few days or weeks before they print and mail the registration form. One of the programs we've been testing during the primaries is the use of text messages to remind young people of their registration deadline. Our early evaluation results indicate that these reminders boosted registration rates of our registrant list by about 4% points!

...

We now have updated voter files for Pennsylvania and Indiana and can evaluate our reminders in those states. In Pennsylvania 68.4% of the treatment group was registered compared to 64.5% of the control group - the text message reminder increased registration rates by about 3.9 percentage points. In Indiana the reminder boosted registration by about 4.1% points. When we combine these two tests and add statistical controls we find that the average increase of 4.1% points is statistically significant, so the increased registration is unlikely to be due to random chance.

It appears that text message voter registration reminders can have a big impact on motivating people to send in their registration forms, presumably because voter registration deadlines are not well-known. This result is in line with related research conducted in 2006 which found that text messages were an effective Get Out the Vote (GOTV) tactic - increasing turnout by about 3% points among new registrants.