Youth Voting

A Pew Research poll released this week showed that Democrats may be losing their grip on Millennials.

The Democratic advantage over the Republicans in party affiliation among young voters, including those who "lean" to a party, reached a whopping 62% to 30% margin in 2008. But by the end of 2009 this 32-point margin had shrunk to just 14 points: 54% Democrat, 40% Republican.

Cue the pundits - even those young Obamaphiles are realizing the dangers of liberalism, right? While some local outlets are probably lazily reporting it this way, we're actually seeing quite the opposite.

Pew's research still shows a heavy tilt toward many liberal stances among Millennial respondents, particularly in the areas of expansion of government responsibility, favoring gay marriage, and resisting the continued military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Futhermore, Millennials are the only generation in the study to have more respondents identify as "liberal" then "conservative." 29 percent identified themselves as "liberal" while 27 percent identified as conservatives.

(We know that the whole notion that youth are liberal until they grow older is, to borrow the British term, poppycock. Research shows that when youth vote for a certain party or form certain political ideologies when they come of age, they tend to keep that voting behavior/ideology over time, despite what many people might think.)

With all this taken into account, young voters are growing disenchanted with the Democratic Party because right now it represents politics as usual. It's not because we fear Democratic liberalism; it's the opposite -- we want more of it! To get it, we need our senators and representatives to find some fortitude somewhere and get moving. The public option resurgence is something to rally around, but it faces formidable challenges in Congress, one of those being Democratic skittishness given the party's lackluster performances in the VA and NJ gubernatorial elections and the special election in Massachusetts.

The bottom line is that as long as Democratic representation in Congress follows a centrist line, it will not be representing the interests and values of the Millennials, leaving more Democratic defections among the demographic likely. 2010 is too important for that.

Today young state Rep. Milack Talia is conducting a hearing about his bill HB 2256 in the Kansas State Legislature about working with the state DMV to pre-register young people when they come into get their drivers permit or drivers license.

HB 2256 was introduced with the purpose of increasing voter participation in our democracy which is an honorable attempt, but I fear the conservative elected officials don't want that at all. I can see elected officials trying to make this go away so they don't look bad to constituents for being against kids being instilled with things like civic pride. And if that happens, you should rest assured we'll cover it here first, on Future Majority!

According to the prepared testimony from Rep. Talia Kansas ranks 37th in the country with registration for those eligible to vote. And of those 18-24 only 49.4% are registered vs. 58.5% nationally. Yet, when those young people vote they do so to the tun of an 85% turnout.

Adam Fogel from the Right to Vote Director of FairVote, is also testifying at the hearing today. The following is an excerpt from his prepared testimony:

"Youth voter pre-registration is the first step in what should be the ultimate goal of developing a voter registration system that reduces the burden placed on the individual and ensures security in the process. This policy would allow young people to register to vote when applying for a driver’s license or farm equipment permit, the same way voters over 18 can do now because of the National Voter Registration Act (“motor voter”). It also gives high schools the ability to conduct systematic, effective voter registration drives in the educational atmosphere of a classroom. Recent research by Michael McDonald of George Mason University shows that the most successful implementation of youth voter pre-registration is accompanied by civic education programming.

This policy will also resolve the problem of the last-minute rush of voter registration applications local boards of election receive before the voter registration deadline every election cycle. Partisan and nonpartisan voter registration groups that register thousands of new voters have been known to hold onto the forms until days before the deadline, making it difficult for the local boards to process all of the forms before the election. Enacting youth voter pre-registration will make voter registration a year-round activity, where local boards of election will no longer be inundated with last-minute rushes and be forced to hire temporary, often inexperienced staff who could be prone to unintentional clerical mistakes."

As someone who believes very passionately in our systems of government, I wish we could see more people participating in the process. It is what makes our country great, and it is the foundation of all democracies. Instilling that civic pride in our youth as early as possible is nothing but a good thing.

Just reported on the Progressive States Network:

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed legislation, HB 30, allowing the pre-registration of 17-year-olds in the state of California. The state joins seven others that allow pre-registration at either 17 or 16. This follows close on the heels of North Carolina, which made their pre-registration age 16 over the summer. As with campaigns in other states, students themselves were the most persuasive advocates for pre-registration. Civically-minded youth and student leaders pointed to the opportunity that would be opened for students like themselves to encourage their peers to register and prepare for voting. Students and a range of advocates including the New America Foundation, AARP, The League of Women Voters and FairVote, made the case the this is a no cost way to boost participation by allowing registration before 18, when many people are in transition.

Disclaimer: it was actually AB 30, and its important to note that this law does not take effect for a couple of years, young voters cannot do this right now.

Matthew Segal from the Student Association for Voter Empowerment said

"I think pre-registration is a major step in the right direction because it helps institutionalize voter registration, said matthew segal. If implemented at DMVs it will also be essential in reaching many young people who are not college bound." SAVE supports replicating what we've done in California federally with a bill we are currently working with FairVote and Congressman Markey's office to introduce."

California's Secretary of State Debra Bowen said in an email from her spokesperson

"Hooking young adults on democracy is one of my priorities as California's chief elections officer," she said. "This expansion of the state's pre-registration law is a good step toward increasing voter participation across the state."

This is certainly a win for civic engagement, but a small one. FM's been monitoring some important electoral reform at the federal level. The Student Voter Act, a S.A.V.E bill, was slated for mark-up earlier this week but it's been rescheduled for early next month. This piece of legislation would affect college students at every higher education institution that receives public funding, essentially Motor Voter for schools. While states are making progress in electoral reform, federal legislation like The Student Voter Act would take a tremendous burden off of voter engagement organizations, allowing them to focus just on GOTV and education. At any rate, kudos to the California youth who just made voting easier in their state.

Chris Bowers wrote a post last night at Open Left explaining why the Republicans are facing such a gloom and doom scenario with young voters. In "Getting Older Doesn't Make You Less Black or Less Gay," Bowers argues that whether or not one gets more conservative as he/she ages is irrelevant. As the minority groups making up a significant amount of the Millennial generation continue toward majority-minority status, their affinity for the Democratic Party and simultaneous rejection of the GOP will prove to be firm and fixed.

...Now young voters are breaking toward Democrats at record levels not just because they are young, but because they are non-white, non-Christian, and out of the closet.

This is significant, because while you might trade in your heart for your head when you get older, you don't get more white, more Christian, or less gay with age. As such, Republicans are not going to start winning these voters over until they start performing better among non-Christians, non-whites, and the LGBT community...

While I agree with Bowers' final conclusion, I feel compelled to fuss with one piece of the premise. Bowers gives a bit too much credence to the "with age comes conservatism" bit. In Rock the Vote's "Partisanship: A Lifelong Loyalty that Develops Early," released in February 2007, we learn that the only thing remarkable about aging and political preferences is the stability in partisan identification over time.

In 1964, the seminal work on this issue, The American Voter, echoes this point: the authors note that "…persons who identify with one of the parties typically have held the same partisan tie for all or almost all of their adult lives."

"When we ask people to recall their first presidential vote, for example, we discover that of those who can remember their vote for President two-thirds still identify with the same party they first voted for."

"A majority (56 per cent) of these presidential voters have never crossed party lines."

Additional studies published in the 1990s bolster the finding that partisan identification is a remarkably stable factor over a voters’ life.

Partisan identification is, of course, not immovable; various factors, including candidate quality, major events (i.e. Watergate),and social factors (i.e. job loss, marriage) can move a voter to one party or another.

However, as noted in The American Voter, "[Partisanship is] a picture characterized more by stability than by change—not by a rigid, immutable fixation on one party rather than the other, but by a persistent adherence and a resistance to contrary influence."

The disaffection between youth and the Republican Party is extensively chronicled on this site and elsewhere throughout the blogosphere. The values which today's youth deem critical -- pragmatism, diversity, and cooperation among them -- barely make an appearance in the operations and politics of today's Republican Party. So Bowers' post noting the progressive views of the ever-growing minority populations is just one more layer in the turbulent relationship.

Perhaps the most frightening graphic for the GOP referenced in Bowers' post came from another post by Alan Abramowitz, at Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball. Of those 18-29 year olds voting in 2008, over 50 percent identified with the heart and soul of the Democratic Party.

Should the GOP continue to rely on its white, conservative base for electoral success, failing to grow any youth movement within the party, the numbers can only get worse. Of course I'm just a concern troll, so what do I know?

Bowers' post, combined with the lessons learned from the Rock the Vote paper, is just one more sign of a seismic shift in store for American politics.

I can't think of a better person than Secretary Jennifer Brunner to speak out about this issue. She understands more about the unbelievable disenfranchisement of young voters face than many and has dedicated her work in the Ohio SOS office to ensuring every citizen of her state who can vote is able to vote.

Please RT this video:
RT @SAVEvoting Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner Supports the Student Voter Act http://tinyurl.com/d34wcm

And please take a minute to push this around facebook to encourage more Secretaries of State to support it as well. THANKS!

HAVA = FAIL. The Help America Vote Act was passed after 2000 when we saw some of the most insane voting problems in Florida that required the US Supreme Court to decide who the President would be. So the new President decided to put forth millions of dollars to help that NEVER happen again... Guess what... it didn't help.

According to a New York Times piece the exact same number of people that had problems in 2000 matched the number of people who had problems in 2008. A whopping 4-5 million voters.

"An additional two million to four million registered voters — or 1 percent to 2 percent of the eligible electorate — were “discouraged” from voting due to administrative hassles, like long lines and voter identification requirements, the study found."

This is according to an extensive study by 150 universities lead by MIT during October and November which surveyed 33,000 eligible voters. The number one problem involved administrative errors. Not voter fraud.... not identification... not a failure to prove who the voter is or isn't.... clerical error. Oops!

This comes at an interesting time because 3 states this week are pushing the Voter ID Bill - claiming that we have to have an ID to prevent fraud. Texas, Oklahoma, and Georgia Republicans proposed legislation, leaving my mind to wonder.... is there a widespread rampant persistent itchy outbreak of voter fraud I haven't heard about going on?

The only voter fraud I heard about is Ann Coulter....

Mike posted the press release SAVE sent out yesterday talking about the problems in Texas and Oklahoma - and despite the save we made with the amendment to allow student ID's be used in Oklahoma - there are still thousands of Oklahomans that stand to be disenfranchised if Governor Brad Henry doesn't veto the bill.

One of the most amazing things was the mention for the record about the student ID portion by Rep. Joe Dorman and the profound floor speech by my buddy Rep. Ryan Kiesel. Listen live below:

In the end, however... it passed.

Texas is just as bad. In a release from the Texas Democratic Party it appears that a male member of the State Senate (Troy Fraser) decided to make sexest jokes rather than answer questions about the voter ID bill.

"I have trouble hearing women's voices," he said when fellow Senator Wendy Davis asked a question during the floor debate about SB 362.

"Sen. Fraser’s voter suppression legislation threatens to take Texas back to the days when some citizens had a voice in the election process and others, including women, were silenced,” said Texas Democratic Party Spokeswoman Kirsten Gray.  “Sen. Fraser and his fellow Texas Senate Republicans need to move past their selective hearing and listen to what this bill really is: A sad and divisive echo from the past."

The release also says that the proposed Texas Voter ID Bill would disenfranchise countless Texas women:

 

• Of all Americans without a license:
• Women are more than twice as likely as men not to have a drivers’ license.
• One of every five senior women does not have a license.
• Over 70% are women.
• There is ample anecdotal evidence that suggest factors like name changes related to marriage and divorce make it less likely a woman will have a current name and address on a photo ID that matches the name and address on the voter list.

The Times piece quotes Sen. Schumer who said that the number of people prevented from voting in 2008 actually exceeded the popular-vote margin in the previous two presidential elections - way to put it into perspective.

"Little has been done, however, to remove barriers to registration and absentee voting.

"Registration issues were for 2008 what machine problems were for the 2000 election,” said Stephen Ansolabehere, a political science professor at Harvard and the study’s lead author. . ."

The study also found that as the popularity of absentee voting had increased, so too had the challenges voters faced in getting those ballots, most often because the requested ballot arrived too late, or the information on the ballot request did not correspond to information in the voter rolls."

I think the increase of vote by mail might have something to do with the inconvenience of voting on Tuesday ... (insert shameless support for Why Tuesday here).

There is a great need for perfecting voting systems so we reduce the number of people that are disenfranchised - but the voter ID laws just cause more problems rather than solving them.

Bumped by Sarah. Kelly is a newly elected officer to the Kansas Young Dems I hope she comes back here often to blog her experience

It is common for me to be the youngest person in the room. Whether it is in a classroom, at work, or in a presentation at the public library, I am frequently the only one in the room that doesn't remember the 80's.

There was a time when this fact embarrassed me. I would try to keep my age a secret because it seemed like as soon as people discovered I was 18 years old, they took my opinions a little more lightly.

Prior to the election of President Barack Obama, it was a common theme among my peers that we didn't need to care about the daily happenings in Washington D.C. Too often, I heard my friends shrug off any kind of involvement because they felt like issues didn't relate to them. Even more disappointing, they felt like their voices didn't matter because they weren't a deep-pocked campaign donor or persuasive lobbyist.

But now, I am happy to report that a new sun is shining in the lives of young voters and he goes by the name of President Barack Obama. According to Circle, a nonpartisan research center, nearly 53% of voters under the age of 30 turned out in the 2008 election, sending a loud cry to all people that we are ready to be involved.

Suddenly, the issues matter to my peers and we have a leader fighting on our side. The cost of college is daunting, but we have a President who wants us all to afford higher education. The unemployment numbers are rising everyday, but Obama is taking action to stabilizing the economy so we can one day enter the workforce with confidence. Finally, we have a President that has made preserving our environment a priority so there is something left for our children and grandchildren to enjoy.

I have high hopes for the future of my peers. With President Obama leading the way, we can start activating young voters immediately. As we begin to find our voices and our place in the democratic process, we will become the next candidates for city council, govenor, and one day, president.

I am no longer embarrassed to be young and involved. I am able to stand proudly and demand that my elders take me opinions seriously knowing that my President is on my side. It is my hope that our parents and grandparents will follow suite and embrace our generation as powerful members of society.

In January 2009, about two percent of young voters are or have been on active military duty. And if the size of young voters was around 44 million (PDF) in 2008, then that means roughly 880,000 have served in the military at some point in their lives. If all young military folks were combined into a state, they would be the 45th most populated state, just larger than Vice President Biden’s home state of Delaware.

With the continuing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially given President Obama’s recent order to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, young service members will continue to be abroad serving our country, making it difficult for them to participate in other meaningful ways at home. Voting is one of those ways. A new report by the Overseas Vote Foundation (PDF) on the 2008 election finds that:

“[m]ore than half (52%) of those who tried but could not vote, were unable to because their ballots were late or did not arrive.”

It’s important that active service members and veterans are able to vote, regardless of their stance on the war. Other issues such as veterans health care and educational loans, just to name a few, can be advocated through a representative. So, it’s imperative that folks who have more pressing issues (their day job) on their mind be able to vote easily and accurately.

There are several organizations working on the nexus of voting, military and youth. Some youth-specific groups, such as Rock the Vote and GoVoteAbsentee.org, helped to educate, register and get-out-the-vote of young service members. Military-focused organizations such as Vote Vets and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America also try to activate their communities. Youth Vote Overseas is one organization that directly targets young people abroad. The government runs the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) for overseas and military voters. Despite these efforts, more education and refining of voting rules and laws needs to happen to ensure young service members can exercise their constitutional right. The Overseas report finds that:

“[n]early one-quarter, 23.7%, of experienced overseas voters still have questions or problems when registering to vote.”

That percentage is likely higher for young service members since they are very new to the voting process, especially in a high-stress environment. Moreover, there were logistical problems:

“[l]ate ballot receipt is one of the most significant problems UOCAVA [Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act] voters faced. Of voters who received their ballots, 39 percent received them after mid-October, making it difficult for to return their ballots in time to be counted.”

If ballot did not arrive, deployed soliders are supposed to take advantage of FVAP’s Back-up Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot, but the report finds that over half of overseas voters didn’t even know this back-up ballot was available.

Finally, the report recommends some ways to improve the voting process for overseas citizens are below, but two are especially noteworthy because the youth community is also pushing for legislation to secure election day registration and universal voter registration.

1. We call for ensuring the important role of UOCAVA
through legislative updates, in particular those that pursue
greater uniformity in the application of this key act.
2. We encourage adoption of the anticipated UOCAVA
Uniform Law intended to harmonize UOCAVA implementation
for overseas and military voters across all states
and territories.
3. We suggest the implementation of technology measures including
online ballot request for registered voters and online
blank ballot delivery to alleviate the transmission and
timing difficulties inherent in the UOCAVA equation.
4. We encourage innovation and investment in the Federal
Write-in Absentee Ballot and broadening the practice of
“Same Day Registration and Balloting” for UOCAVA
voters.
5. We underscore the importance of privacy and security
considerations when applying technology to UOCAVA
processes.
6. We propose a willingness to include UOCAVA voters
into any federal “universal voter registration”

As Republicans commence their "rebuilding," we should keep an eye on the tendency for conservatives to explain away their lack of success with youth by citing their failure to use technology.

Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) and Steve Moore engaged in some of that talk in Moore's "Weekend Interview" piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.

..."We've got young people who voted for Obama by better than a 2-to-1 margin. The data is very clear, that when people vote in their first two presidential elections for the same party, more than 80% of those people are going to stay with that party for the rest of their life, barring some big event that changes it."

This gives the GOP four years to learn to communicate with the iPod generation. The party, he says, must figure out how to tap new media and new messaging to reach out and touch 20-somethings.

We've recently floated a few links on this site about Aaron Schock (R-IL), the youngest member of Congress, who was elected in 2008. In Time's recent interview with the congressman, Shock, a Millennial, reveals he also has a tin ear when it comes to reading the politics of his generation.

[Y]our generation was very active politically last year. But most supported Democrats. Is there something your party doesn't get about younger voters?

I think at times elected officials lose sight of the fact that the younger generation uses different means of communications. They don't necessarily pick up the New York Times to get their news. They may go online, and they may use more things like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube — things that members of the older generation aren't as accustomed to using to communicate with constituents.

If President-elect Obama's campaign taught us anything, it was how to use new media to reach out to youth. If your source of information is your iPhone and your Facebook page, then hands down, Senator Obama did a much better job than Senator McCain. Job One is just reaching out and communicating.

(h/t Jesse Singal @ pushback)

As Singal notes in his post, the GOP needs to have something worthwhile and appealing to communicate if it wants Millennials to do anything other than recoil in disgust at their advances.

Here's an excerpt from John McCain's speech at the Republican National Convention:

We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and judges who dispense justice impartially and don’t legislate from the bench. We believe in the values of families, neighborhoods and communities.

We believe in a government that unleashes the creativity and initiative of Americans. Government that doesn’t make your choices for you, but works to make sure you have more choices to make for yourself.

I will keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them. I will open new markets to our goods and services. My opponent will close them. I will cut government spending. He will increase it.

Emphasis added.

The problem is that that's simply not what Millennials want to hear:

If the GOP keeps insisting their ideology is not the problem and opts to work on their Twitter and Facebook skills instead, not only will they lose even more of the youth vote; they'll lose nearly all of their political relevance.

To borrow from a book title, GOP: We're just not that into you.

Update: Kos just posted an example of the political deafness and blindness I just described below from a 2006 Peggy Noonan column.

Excerpt:

Conservatives are always writing about the strains and stresses within the Republican Party, and they are real. But the Democratic Party seems to be near imploding, and for that most humiliating of reasons: its meaninglessness. Republicans are at least arguing over their meaning.

The venom is bubbling on websites like Kos, where Tuesday afternoon, after the Alito vote, various leftists wrote in such comments as "F--- our democratic leaders," "Vichy Democrats" and "F--- Mary Landrieu, I hope she drowns." The old union lunch-pail Democrats are dead, the intellects of the Kennedy and Johnson era retired or gone, and this--I hope she drowns--seems, increasingly, to be the authentic voice of the Democratic base.

How will a sane, stable, serious Democrat get the nomination in 2008 when these are the activists to whom the appeal must be made?

Republicans have crazies. All parties do. But in the case of the Democrats--the leader of their party, after all, is the unhinged Howard Dean--the lunatics seem increasingly to be taking over the long-term health-care facility. Great parties die this way, or show that they are dying.

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As if 2006 and 2008 weren't humiliating enough for the Grand Old Party, they're trying their best to get to a whole new kind of embarrassment come 2010/2012.

Obviously blind and deaf to the current political environment and demographics, we see the Republicans taking steps backward to accommodate the political views of its ever-shrinking base. John Boehner sounds a lot like Herbert Hoover:

“If we’re really serious about creating jobs, what we ought to do is we ought to eliminate the capital-gains tax,” Boehner said on Fox. “Why not lower capital gains taxes for -- and corporate income taxes for corporations in America to help keep jobs here?”

And then we get word that South Carolina Republican chair, Katon Dawson, is running for chairman of the Republican National Committee. Yes, that whites-only club member Katon Dawson, who didn't decide until September, when he realized he wanted to run for RNC chair, that he'd get rid of his racist ties.

Katon Dawson, the South Carolina GOP chairman, announced his candidacy for RNC chair yesterday.

And guess what: Back in September, when Dawson was first quietly laying the groundwork for his RNC run, The State newspaper reported that he resigned his membership in the nearly 80-year-old Forest Lake Club. Members told the newspaper at the time that the club's deed has a whites-only restriction and has no black members.

[...]

What's more, The State said that Dawson resigned the club after it became known that the paper was getting ready to report his membership.

So here we are, almost four weeks after Election Day, and the GOP continues to ignore the warning signs.

1. Like similar reports, a report from the Center for American Progress released a few weeks ago finds that Millennials (18-29 year old voters in the 2008 election) overwhelmingly saw government as the chief problem-solver.

   

2. From the Generation We and 2008 report discussed in Mike's post last week, Millennials are more concerned that the wealthiest in society and corporations will get too many tax breaks than be taxed too much.
   

   Millennials showed less tax sensitivity than voters as a whole in terms of moves to increase economic performance and fairness. For example, respondents were given the choice “I'm more worried that we will fail to make the investments we need to create jobs and strengthen the economy. OR I'm more worried that we will go too far in increasing government spending and will end up raising taxes to pay for it”. Millennials chose the first over the second statement by 67-33, while voters overall were split down the middle 48-49. Similarly, the following choice was posed about corporate tax breaks: “I'm more worried that we will give more tax breaks to the rich and corporations. OR I'm more worried that we will go too far taxing the rich and corporations”. Millennials favored the first statement over the second by 74-26, compared to 61-34 among all voters.

   A related economic policy choice was the following: “When I voted, I was more concerned that Obama will raise taxes and increase government spending. OR When I voted, I was more concerned that McCain will continue the economic policies that have cost us jobs and caused higher prices”. By 57-33, Millennials were more concerned about McCain’s policies causing job loss and price hikes than about Obama’s policies causing tax hikes and spending increases. But among voters as a whole, this choice
   elicited a very close 49-45 split.

3. The Progressive Politics of the Millennial Generation report notes that Millennials are the most diverse generation in America's history, believing that race shouldn't limit relationships with other human beings, romantic or otherwise.
   

   According to March, 2006 Census data, about 62 percent of Millennial adults are non-Hispanic white, 18 percent are Hispanic, 14 percent are black and 5 percent are Asian. Reflecting this diversity and a generational proclivity toward seeing race as “no big deal,” Millennial attitudes on race are extremely progressive. According to the Pew Gen Next study, in 2003, almost all (89 percent) of white 18-25 year old Millennials said they agreed that “it’s all right for blacks and whites to date each other,” including 64 percent who “completely” agreed. Back in 1987-88, when the same question was posed to white 18-25 year old Gen Xers, just 56 percent agreed with this statement. Data from a 2005 Gallup poll underscore these findings; 95 percent of 18-29 year olds said they approve of blacks and whites dating and 60 percent of this age group said they had dated someone of a different race. In addition, 82 percent of white 18-25 year old Millennials in 2003 disagreed with the idea that they “don’t have much in common with people of other races.”

Young voters want the country to go in one direction, and the GOP, in these two examples, are apparently going to go the other way.

While this GOP stubbornness is certainly good news for the Democratic Party (provided we keep improving our youth outreach efforts), it's sad for the country. In order for youth to be healthily engaged in politics, both parties need to hold up their end of the bargain.