Matthew.Segal's blog

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.

Matthew Segal is the founding executive director of the Student Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE) and the National Challenge Coordinator for the Roosevelt Institution--the nation's first student think-tank. He can be reached at Matthew.Segal@savevoting.org.

Two weeks ago, September 25th, the United States Supreme Court agreed to consider a case on voter ID laws. The case, appealed in the seventh circuit court, requires registered voters in the state of Indiana to provide a government-issued photo ID in order to cast a ballot. Proponents of the law will tell you that photo IDs are necessary to combat voter fraud, which is pervasive and insidious. They will readily speak about "illegal immigrants" who are inundating our polling places and casting illegitimate votes without providing any identification. They will also just say that there is no good reason why someone should not have photo identification; after all, you need one to drive a car, fly on an airplane, cash a check, or even to rent a movie.

What proponents of the bill will not tell you is that, shocking as it may seem, not all Americans drive cars, fly on planes, or even go to Blockbuster. The actual evidence of this "rampant" voter fraud is minimal. Arizona, where voter ID laws were implemented in November of 2006, has 2.7 million registered voters, "238 [of whom] were believed to have been non-citizens in the last 10 years" according to Joyce Purnick in a Sept. 26, 2006 article in the New York Times. On top of this, any undocumented immigrant who is foolish enough to try to vote illegally will likely receive incarceration if not deportation for such actions—risks that are clearly not worth the reward.

In its attempt to cordon the throng of illegal immigrant phantom voters, voter ID laws sacrifice the poor, the elderly, the young, and many minorities as collateral damage. The bill is tantamount to a modern day "poll-tax," that forces many eligible voters to pay for a government-issued photo ID. Furthermore, proof of citizenship often comes in the form of a birth certificate, another document unobtainable or even nonexistent for many people born outside of hospitals. Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan estimates that in her state alone, some 200,000 eligible voters do not possess driver's licenses or any similar forms of photo identification. Many senior citizens have let their driver's licenses expire and many young people have not yet applied for them, while poor citizens often cannot afford to drive cars or purchase state approved IDs and passports.

Requiring photo IDs also increases confusion for election administrators. In a hearing held by the Student Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE) this past July, several college students testified about the inability to prove domicile in their college districts merely because their photo ID was from a different part of the state or another state entirely. Photo ID laws can therefore prevent out-of-state college students from registering in the district where they attend school. Were this the case ubiquitously, nearly all young voters would be forced to vote absentee, making the registration process more bureaucratic, time-consuming, and cumbersome.