Indyvoter

It's been a shady week here at FM. Content has been light as I've been sick most of the week, and struggling through a major work crunch at both my day job and with the book. To top it all off, the site was down for an hour this morning. Sorry about that.

Next week I hope things will be back to normal, and I expect that I will also finally roll out that second big announcement I alluded to a couple weeks ago. In the meantime, here are a few stories you should check out:

• In a piece at Huffington Post, Jason Carter, grandson of the former President Jimmy Carter, lays out a case for a new, service-oriented politics, and promotes an organization we've profiled here at FM before: Democrats Work.
• The new student aid bill we blogged about earlier this summer emerged from conference committee yesterday. The bill, which is slated to reduce lender subsidies and substantially increase need-based student aid, will now go back to the House and Senate for approval. Details on the bill, how it came to pass, and the process moving forward can be found here. The Project on Student Debt has a fact sheet.
• The League has a new website. When things quite down, maybe I'll give it a review.

Cross posted at MyDD. Please recommend.

The League of Young Voters is reporting that they are losing a full 1/3 of their national funding, and rumor has it that the reason is that Democracy Alliance is cutting off all of its youth outreach efforts. If true, this is really fucked up.

The League is one of the only youth groups that appeals to a truly multi-racial audience. They're focused in how they distribute their resources, they are culturally in touch with their target audience, and they are serious about getting shit done. At almost every conference I go to, there is a huge contingent from the League sharing the experiences and improving their game. The fact that they are struggling for funds is bad news for the progressives everywhere.

If the rumor mill is correct, and Democracy Alliance is abdicating all responsibility for youth funding, that is even worse news. Democracy Alliance is supposed to be the progressive answer to the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, and the immense conservative funding network set up by the Coors, Olin, Scaife, Koch and Bradley Foundations. In 2003, Conservative Foundations gave approximately $48 million to conservative youth organizations. That's almost as much as Democracy Alliance gave to all progressive grantees in its first two years of operation. We need to be spending more money on youth programs, not less. After the last three elections you would think progressive donors would understand that.

I still haven't spoken with the League yet for my book. This seems like as good a time as any to get in touch. I'll also make some other inquiries and try to find out if its true about Democracy Alliance. Will report back when I know more. If anyone has more information, please email me at mike [dot] connery [at] gmail [dot] com.

You can help out the League by donating here.

Normally I'm not a fan of the idea of voter guides. As a mass-turnout strategy, there is some evidence that they are not effective. A lot of times you'll hear that folks don't vote because they feel uninformed and don't want to make the wrong choice. But evidence suggests that voter guides - lengthy, text heavy affairs - don't alleviate those concerns. Maybe people don't read them, maybe they don't trust them. Maybe "I don't know enough" is just an excuse for someone who really doesn't want to vote.

I don't know. And - as in a lot of youth research - turnout is the measurement. Very rarely do we get reliable statistics about whether a particular tactic increases partisanship, which strike me as the potential outcome of a good voter guide. (But this is a whole other ball of wax).

Nevertheless, this experiment by The Pittsburgh League of Young Voters seems like a promising reinvention of the voter guide concept. They're creating short interviews with local candidates, posting them on YouTube, and aggregating them on their website along with information about where people vote, and which candidates are running in their districts.

Maybe these will be more effective - at increasing turnout, or at increasing partisanship in voting. Video gives you a much better sense of these (normally very obscure) candidates as human beings, and these videos are certainly more comprehensible and accessible than pages of text listing the issue positions of dozens of candidates. It's also nice that they boiled it down to the two issues that are of most concern to The League and its members.

This also seems pretty doable for a lot of groups. With iMovie (included on any Apple) and a throw-away digital video camera, or even a cellphone with video options, you can probably capture 30 seconds of worthwhile video. Sound might present a bit of a problem. I'd love to hear what any audio/video folks think.

Also - I added some stuff to the Online Video article in the Communications section of the wiki. If you've got more to add, please do.