Rock the Vote

So, I'm finally settled back in. Here's the rest of those Quick Hits I didn't get to while at the Austin airport, as well as a few more that have accumulated since.

• The Austin Statesman picked up our little youth caucus, but seemed to miss the point. The caucus was an informal meeting, not a strategy session to construct a master youth plan. And the focus of the discussion - to what extent our youth movement needed to be about GOTV and infrastructure for organizing our peers, or building an ideological consensus - was barely touched on in his piece.
• In this piece by The Washington Post, 29 year old Republican tech strategist David All confirms the complete disconnect between the GOP and Millennials. My favorite line:
  

  David All points to a page on McCain's Web site as more old-fogy branding:

• PEW reports that young voters in this election are at least - if not more - knowledgeable about the candidates' position on Iraq.
• Anderson Cooper's ac360 blog profiles HeadCount and their latest work at the Camp Bisco festival.
• The Virginia Pilot reports that young Viginians (under 25) are registering at twice the rate of their elders. Registration has increased 10% in the last year.
• Rumors abound that Barack Obama is going to show up as a surprise guest at this year's Lollapalooza, which takes place in his hometown of Chicago.
• Young People For just announced the new class of their Front Line Leaders Academy.
• Nine Latino organizations are teaming up to spend $5 million on a nonpartisan voter registration effort targeting 2 million Latinos.
• Finally, Rock the Vote is teaming up with Comcast in its effort to register 2 million new voters this election cycle. I'm not a fan of this partnership. Last year, Comcast was caught blocking internet traffic from peer to peer networks. They are on the wrong side of the Net Neutrality debate.

Congrats to the super awesome Jackie V who won the first round of artists who won the DemROCKracy Band Competition!

If you don't know Jackie V you are missing out. She's 18 years old this year and has gone above and beyond to register voters on her MySpace page as well as in her community. She's been playing the piano since she was a little girl and now plays some edgy pop with a jazz twist all over Austin, Texas.

We caught up with Jackie today to present her with her beautiful new Gibson Guitar and encourage her to keep up the good work to get to the big Rock the Vote Concert Extravaganza in August!

Check out Jackie as she receives her guitar:

Crossposted from Rock the Trail

Lots of stuff about McCain and Obama, but also a few movement-oriented pieces as well. Enjoy.

• Barack Obama authored an op-ed in today's New York Times in which he lays out his Iraq strategy. Here's my favorite part:

  As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq.

  In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.

• This weekend, the New York Times did a hit-piece on Obama, looking to drive a wedge between him and his youthful supporters in the media narrative. Tim Fernholz has the proper response over at Tapped. Also at the Prospect, Courtney Martin has a slightly different take on Obama's "tacking to the center."
• David Frum is the latest conservative to try to make hay about young voters supposed-support of privatized accounts for Social Security.
• The LA Times profiles Joel Flatow. If you want to bring big-name musicians into politics, apparently he's the go-to guy. Only problem, he's also one of the dudes behind the RIAA's awesome strategy of suing its fans. This sucks, big time, and it's why groups like MFA losing their funding sucks even worse. I want musicians involved in politics to support smart copyright reform, not be reactionaries advocating on behalf of a dying business model. As such, getting rid of people like Flatow and delinking the two seems pretty important.
• Rock the Vote says that 3,100 bands signed up for their DemROCKracy contest. If each band registered only 25 fans, that would be 77,500 registrations. Bad ass.
• The Hip Hop Caucus Blog has a great look at the Jesse Jackson/Obama scandal framed as a generational issue within the black community and civil rights movement.
• Finally, John McCain calls college students "spoiled children. Awesome. Here's what I say to that:

Originally posted by Kat Barr on the Rock the Vote blog. Cross-posted with permission.

If you’ve ever read my blog posts, gotten me talking about voting rights and our democracy, or heard me ramble on about the miracle of a country founded on “we the people” (sorry if you have), you’d know I can get pretty seriously patriotic about America and the rights we have as voters to shape it.

So that’s why when I saw this article, and this one from last week, I was seriously pissed.

Here’s the background: a while ago, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs banned voter registration drives at its federally-run facilities across the country, including nursing homes, homeless shelters, and rehab centers.

The V.A. claims the “Hatch Act” prevents their facilities from allowing registration at V.A. facilities. But as Senator Daniel Akaka, chair of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, stated yesterday, that is bogus.

And as numerous democracy advocates have pointed out, state-run agencies are actually required by law to offer voter registration to clients, and a 1994 Executive Order said federal agencies may do the same.

Yet the V.A. still refuses to budge.

Wow. Banning the most basic action of a democracy from centers helping and housing men and woman who have been fighting for democracy. It makes my head spin.

Why do I care so much? Outside of the fact that this is completely convoluted, the V.A.’s action will disproportionally impact thousands of young Americans recently returned from serving in the Middle East.

Three-quarters of the men and women who have died fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan were under 30 years of age. Thousands of veterans are young Americans who could be participating in a presidential election for the very first time. Young Americans are giving their lives for our country.

To erect a barrier to allowing these young veterans, and all veterans, from registering to vote and participating in our democracy is wrong.

It should be the other way around. Just like state-run agencies – from food stamp offices to the Department of Motor Vehicles – are required to register their clients to vote, federally-run V.A. facilities should do the same. Centers should be helping their constituents update their registration address, get registered, and ensure they are given the tools for active participation.

I remember back in ’05 when I heard that solidiers stationed in Virginia were being (illegally) required to fill out additional paperwork to register to vote in the state. That was outrageous.

What the V.A. is doing is ten steps beyond outrageous.

There are hundreds of nonpartisan organizations working their tails off to register voters this year – let them come and register our veterans! Or better yet, encourage V.A. facilities to register their clients themselves. All it takes is one piece of paper and five minutes to help make sure another American has his or her say in their own future and that our democracy lives up to its incredible potential.

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.