Online Voter Registration Kicking Ass and Taking Names

In the last week I've spoken to people from Declare Yourself and Rock the Vote, the two nonpartisan organizations making a major push to register voters via online registration. So far, it looks like they are both kicking ass and taking names.

According to Rock the Vote, as of Thursday over 300,000 18-29 year olds had used the RTV/CREDO Action widget to register young voters. About another 123,000 voters older than 30 had also registered via the tool. According to Declare Yourself, 260,000 young people have registered via their website so far this cycle.

That means that over half a million new young voters were added to the rolls so far this cycle. In 2004, Rock the Vote registered 1.2 million new young voters, 800,000 of which went to the polls. It's barely February and they've already achieved 1/4 of their previous total. And the folks at Declare Yourself believe that they are on track to exceed their stated target of 2 million new young voters.

This is huge for Democrats and for the youth vote community.