Rapid Response

Reading all the youth vote press in the last week, one thing is abundantly clear - the punditry is now fully on board the youth vote wagon. When James Carville goes from saying this:

Show me a candidate who depends on the youth vote and I'll show you a loser.

To this:

Exit polling indicates that Mr Obama won two-thirds of those voting under 30 years old against 32 per cent for John McCain. Compare that with a 54-45 margin for John Kerry in 2004 and a 48-46 margin for Al Gore in 2000. Consider this: if young people had voted for Democrats at about the same proportion of the overall electorate (52-46) as they had voted as recently as 2000 for Mr Gore and for many cycles prior, Mr Obama would not have won North Carolina or Indiana. Young voters also provided the margin of victory in key battleground states such as Florida, Virginia and Ohio. The youth vote expanded the map for Mr Obama; it put him over the top in states not won by Democrats in decades.

Something has clearly changed.

The latest in this steady stream of pundits now cheer-leading the youth vote comes from this interview in Rolling Stone between Jann Wenner, David Gergen and Peter Hart:

Let's talk about a couple of those constituencies. The youth vote — what role did it play? Was it big enough to really make a difference?
HART: It made a huge difference. Remember: When we talk about the youth vote, we're talking about all 50 states. It's not like the evangelical vote or an ethnic group that is located in one particular area. Youth voters — coast to coast, border to border — turned to Obama in numbers that are just hard to fathom. They were drawn to him from day one, and it was a connection that was as psychological as it was issue-driven. This is somebody who spoke their language, who understood the times and who provided a direction that they wanted to see the country go in. Gore carried young voters by two points. Kerry carried them by about nine points. Obama carried them by 34 points.

GERGEN: The emergence of this millennial generation as a force in American politics is going to be one of the biggest stories in the country over the next 20 years or so. We know from past history that when young people vote for one party a couple of times, they tend to vote for that party during their adult lifetimes in disproportionate numbers. We last saw this with Ronald Reagan, who attracted an unusual number of young people. But the rising generation of millennials is bigger than what has come before. They are even bigger than the baby-boom population, and they are much more progressive and diverse. Forty percent of millennials are minorities. They look past gender and race in ways that baby boomers do not. They embrace diversity, whereas older Americans tend to be wary or even scared of it. So this is an enormous potential asset for Democrats. We talked all along about whether Barack being black would drive away voters. Among the millennials, the fact that he was black attracted voters.

The whole interview is quite good. Gergen and Hart know their stuff and give a good overview of the youth vote, technology, and Obama's new winning coalition. But these quotes in particular could have been ripped right from the partisan youth vote coalition's talking points. A year ago, it's hard to imagine that the post-election youth vote narrative would be so favorable. You really can't complain. Except I'm me, so I will complain.

The one thing that's missing in this picture is us - the young people. It's great that the punditocracy is on board and preaching the youth vote, but there are precious few of us on TV or in some of these big stories talking about the youth vote and how we got from 2000's near tie among youth to last week's landslide. If I had my druthers, we'd be out there more telling our story rather than the pundits, many of whom probably doubted the youth vote right up until the polls closed.

Here's the latest media stories on the youth vote:

• The New York Times ran a big piece in Sunday's paper that in part praised young voters for their participation and influence on the election. It also asked the question "what next?" That's something I'm seeing a lot more of in the second wave of youth vote stories.
• Further examples of that new, "what next/will they stay involved" narrative can be found in these stories from Medill Reports and San Jose Mercury News.
• Another story by the Mercury News looks at how the governing philosophy favored by Millennials influenced their voting habit in this election.
• Luke Russert has a more optimistic - and data-driven - look at the youth turnout phenomenon.
• Campus Politico notes that campus activists are now turning their eyes towards issue advocacy and 2009 races.
• The Arizona Republic reports that the shifting partisan loyalties of the Millennials is putting the GOP in a tough spot.
• The Associated Press says that "young voters have clout, and they used it."
• At WireTap, Biko Baker, the Executive Director of the League of Young Voters, write about how he came to "drink the Obama Kool Aid," and encourages young activists not to let up now that Obama is in office.

If you've read this far, you are obviously looking to find the secret of Obama's success. That claim might be a little overblown, but you should definitely check out these two pieces:

• Ari Melber writes about Obama's email list and calls it "the big stick Obama will carry to Washington."

  Obama's list now tops a whopping ten million people, according to today's Washington Post.

  The article does not directly attribute that figure to anyone. The same paragraph cites "senior aides," however, to report that the list is so financially valuable that it was "briefly offered" as loan "collateral during a cash-flow crunch." A source in a position to know also told me that the email list has reached eleven million people. [...]

  It enables direct communication at a remarkable scale. The next President can instantly address 16 percent of his national supporters, based on the popular vote. To put it another way, the list dwarfs the audience of all the nightly cable news shows combined.

• At TechPresident, Gene Koo looks at how technology beefed up the Obama ground game - particularly in the final week - and takes a guess at how these technologies will transform the ground game in 2010 or 2012.

Jim Dwyer of the New York Times has finally issued what can only be called a semi-correction to his factually flawed article about Rock the Vote. He doesn't admit that his original article was wrong, but does give Rock the Vote space to tell their side of the story and help New Yorkers whose ballot is in question.

My column last Saturday discussed the troubles encountered by New Yorkers who tried to register to vote using a form supplied by Rock the Vote, which was printed with the address of the State Board of Elections in Albany. That agency does not register voters; under the State Constitution, only the county boards of elections can register voters.

After the column appeared, Heather Smith, the executive director of Rock the Vote, contacted me to say that the state address was on a list provided by the federal Election Assistance Commission, and that her group had twice received written confirmation from state officials that they could receive the applications in Albany.

In a mass e-mail message sent on Friday afternoon, Ms. Smith said she was optimistic “that everyone who filled out, downloaded, signed and mailed a form by the Oct. 10 registration deadline will be eligible to vote — no matter where you sent it.” She urged people who registered but can’t find their names on the online list at https://voterlookup.elections.state.ny.us/ to contact 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683).

Here's a quick update on the debate between Rock the Vote, The New York Times, and the NY State Board of Elections over thousands of correct voter registrations that may not be processed in time for the election.

At CNN's Politicker blog, Rock the Vote notes that over 2,200 young voters have emailed the group in response to an email they sent out alerting voters to the problem. Rock the Vote insists there is still a huge backlog of unprocessed voter registrations. The BoE claims that is not the case:

Rock the Vote spokeswoman Chrissy Faessen said state election officials lack the necessary resources to process tens of thousands of last-minute registration forms the youth-oriented group filed, raising questions about whether those people would be able to cast ballots on November 4.

"There's a huge capacity backlog," she said. "We don't have any indication that those will get on the rolls before Election Day."

Faessen told CNN that about 2,200 people have e-mailed Rock the Vote to report their names missing from registration rolls. More than 2.5 million people downloaded registration forms from the group's Web site, she said.

But election officials said they are capable of processing the record number of new registrations filed this year, and no backlog exists.

Regular readers will remember that this problem with the NY State Board of Elections was discovered when Jim Dwyer, a reporter for the New York Times wrote a factually incorrect story blaming Rock the Vote for the registration mistakes.

Dwyer continues to blog and report on voter registration problems in New York City, but has not issued a correction or addressed his error in any subsequent columns.

We're not the only one's who have noticed this, and now Dwyer is getting called out by the political desk at Rolling Stone:

“From our perspective,” Rosemary E. Rodriguez, Chair of the Elections Assistance Commission (EAC), told Rolling Stone, “Rock the Vote followed federal law. Rock the Vote used the federal form; federal law requires the form to be accepted.”

[Rolling Stone reached out the author of the Times piece for comment, but there was no immediate response.]

The title of the Rolling Stone piece is The New York Times Owes Rock the Vote a Correction.

In the Wall Street Journal today, reporter Sarah Murray mangles the data from a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC/MySpace poll to produce an article that casts doubt on the engagement of young voters without any regard for recent trends in youth voting: New Voters Back Obama, Turnout Unsure. This is the second time in less than a month that she has done so in the pages of The Journal.

There are a number of problems with Murray's analysis. Most importantly, Murray over-represents the number of youth respondents in the poll, and then uses a deck stacked with older, "lapsed" voters to cast doubt on youth turnout next week.

Here's Murray over-representing young voter respondents in the poll data:

Three-quarters of those surveyed are young voters registering for the first time, and Sen. Obama has been working to mobilize such voters since his primary fight against Sen. Hillary Clinton.

This is demonstrably not true. Here is the demographic make-up of the poll by age:

Age Group	% Respondents
18-20	31
21-24	16
25-29	8
30-34	8
35-39	9
40-44	5
45-49	4
50-54	6
55-59	2
60-64	4
65-69	3
70-74	2
75 and over	2

Looking at this data, only 56 percent of the poll respondents are under 30 years of age, 19 points shy of "three quarters." In fact, the youngest "three quarters" of poll respondents would range in age from 18 to their low 40s. That may fly in the Republican Party, but common sense should tell you that a 40 year old is no longer a 'young voter' by any reasonable standard.

The implication throughout Murray's article, though, is that "Obama's youth supporters may not show up:"

There still are warning signs, however, that new voters -- traditionally difficult to get to the polls on Election Day -- could be unreliable. Just 66% of those voters said they would definitely vote this year, compared with 90% of registered voters overall. Additionally, only six in 10 said they were very interested in the election, compared with eight in 10 of the larger electorate. [...]

"The challenge now for the Obama campaign is not one of persuasion," said Mr. Newhouse, the Republican pollster. "The challenge to the Obama campaign is what we call stimulus; it's getting them out to vote."

Bottom line? This is the same "youth don't vote" story we've heard for years dressed up with "new voters" as a euphemism for "young voters." The data is stacked with information from hundreds of respondents that could in no way be considered young voters, and Murray's reporting does not take into account any recent youth vote trends in its reporting to provide context for their findings.

Here's what we know that didn't make it into Murray's story:

• We know that youth turnout rose in 2004, rose again in 2006, and was double, triple, and in some states quadruple previous turnout during the primaries.
• We know that Senator Obama and independent youth organizations have worked tirelessly to register new, young voters this cycle.
• Most importantly, we know that when young people are registered to vote, they turnout in numbers that are comparable to older registered voters. In 2004, 81.6% of all registered youth actually cast their ballot.

No one knows what youth turnout will look like until the polls are closed on election day, but all the trends are highly favorable. It's disappointing to see the Wall Street Journal continue to misread their own, uncontextualized data to cast doubts on the intentions of young voters.

Late last week, a PR push began for a study coming out of Washington State University's Mass Communication and Society journal. The study made some interesting, if extremely limited, findings about the utility of celebrity GOTV campaigns. The media, however, has jumped ahead of the gun and is using the study to validate a simplistic idea that celebrity endorsements directly caused higher turnout in 2004. Such stories have already run in the Seattle PI and Reuters. These stories go beyond the extremely limited findings of the study.

The study, Celebrity Endorsements and Their Potential to Motivate Young Voters, measures the effects of celebrity promotions on "apathy" and "complacency" in young voters, in which apathy is defined as a total lack of interest and an unwillingess to get involved, whereas complacency is defined as a satisfaction with the current the state of affairs that puts the relevance of political participation at a distance and decreases one's motivation to be civically engaged.

Furthermore, scholars studying social capital raise concerns about young adults’ self-absorption and lack of concern with the larger society (Buckingham, 1997). Complacency, therefore, seems to comprise an important target for GOTV campaigns because the motivation to participate in public affairs derives, in part, from the identification of a public problem that affects the individual or those about whom the individual cares (Delli Carpini, 2000; Holbert, Kwak, & Shah, 2003).

Given that many GOTV promotions have been targeted directly toward energizing young adults, it seems useful to examine whether this type of campaign can provide an opportunity to decrease complacency among young voters. To the extent young adults are receptive to the identification-based appeals of the promotions, the campaigns may encourage them to recognize and develop an understanding of societal issues that previously seemed irrelevant.

The study interestingly suggests that it is in "complacent" youth that celebrity endorsements have the greatest impact. I'm not sure how useful the finding is, given that a field director can't exactly target for "complacent" vs. "apathetic" youth, nor can communications directors buy their ad time to hit the complacent demographic more than that apathetic demographic. Nevertheless, it's an interesting look into why celebrity PSAs might be effective in some instances but not in others.

The results of this study therefore suggest that the celebrity-based promotions seemed to hold more promise for easing involvement through the reduction of complacency than for reducing apathy. Receptivity to promotions predicted lower levels of complacency and reduced complacency associated positively with both involvement and self-efficacy. Although not tested directly in this study, these promotions may have the ability over time to help arrest young citizens’ spiral into disaffection by helping to reduce their complacency, thereby contributing to their heightened public affairs involvement and sense of self-efficacy.

This suggests that celebrities who appeal to youth can help motivate engagement in the civic affairs as their fans emulate attitudes and behaviors supportive of public affairs participation. The results suggest that this process encourages fans to become more aware of the personal relevance of issues, which motivates them to use the media to learn more, thereby further increasing efficacy.

All well and good, but the authors themselves admit that their findings are extremely limited by the scope and makeup of their sample, which consisted of only 305 youth all attending the same 4-year university:

The findings of this study are limited in that the sample was one of convenience and not generalizable to the national population of young adults.These promotions may have had a different effect in other geographic regions, as well as with other segments of young voters. In addition, all participants of the study were enrolled in a 4-year university, which could have implications for their political activity and interest in politics. Education consistently associates with voting behavior in older adults; therefore, college students may be more receptive to voting promotions than others in their age group. In addition, McDevitt and Chaffee (1998) indicated that top-down, GOTV promotions fail to motivate individuals of low socioeconomic status, thereby contributing to the ever widening knowledge gap. To gain a better understanding of mechanisms that can motivate young citizens, future research will require a study utilizing a more diverse sample. In addition, our study is limited by having occurred at a single point in the 2004 election process. Longitudinal data will be required to fully address the extent to which these promotions have lasting influence.

I would also add here that the study made no attempt to control for other factors such as how the celebrities were used. Some groups, like Music for America, Head Count, and Punk Voter, employed a field-based, peer to peer model in their celebrity partnerships. Others like Hip Hop Summit Action Network held massive, educational stadium concerts. MoveOn's Vote for Change primarily used older artists more appealing to Gen X or Boomers, and focused solely on stadium sized shows in swing states. Rock the Vote and Vote or Die ran massive PR campaigns. How a celebrity is utilized in a GOTV campaign could also determine their efficacy.

The study also does not take into account other factors influencing young voter turnout, including field and communications programs of campaigns and nonprofit groups like YDA, College Democrats, the Bus Fed, and The League, who are out there contacting voters on a daily basis.

Ultimately, this study provides some nice, tentative evidence that celebrities can do more than build a brand for an organization; they can actually help drive engagement. But far more work needs to be done before I'm comfortable seeing headlines like Celebrities can coax youth to vote, study shows, or reading interviews like this that play up the importance of celebrity endorsements without any solid data. On that note, it would be very interesting to see the study's authors team up with Music for Democracy to test the efficacy of their Be the Change tool.

In thinking over my last post about Gallup's estimates, I had a horrific thought. What if youth turnout skyrockets but, because turnout is again up among all demographics, the youth share of the electorate decreases?

That would be a communications nightmare. Let's pray it doesn't happen.

Two articles caught my eye today. The first, from AFP, was headlined: US Election Shapes Up As Duel of Generations.

About 44 million young people between the age of 19 and 29 will be able to vote in November, according to a recent Gallup opinion poll. Sixty-five percent of them say they plan to vote for Obama, compared to only 31 percent who plan to do so for McCain.

But among those aged 65 and over, McCain and Obama are statistically tied, 44 to 45 percent respectively.

Seniors traditionally have high turnout rates -- 72 percent voted in 2004 -- while young voters are have historically been fickle and unreliable.

The age difference also marks the candidates' style. During the television debates, McCain, 72, quoted Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower, while Obama, 47, referred to Google.

On Sunday former secretary of state and military leader Colin Powell endorsed Obama, calling for the need for "generational" change.

"I think we need a transformational figure, I think we need a generational change. That is why I'm supporting Senator Obama," Powell said in an interview with NBC.

While the story is much more evenhanded than the title (ie - blame the editors, not the reporter), the entire framework of generational warfare is unnecessarily antagonistic and troubling, for numerous reasons. First, I think it is simplistic to the point of being inaccurate. Second, I see it as a potential narrative device for the Right to delegitimize an Obama win, oppose a legislative agenda that conflicts with its own, and it lays the groundwork for driving a wedge between Democrats and young voters. Let's pick this apart a bit.

First, let's deal with the inaccuracy. Here's a look at the actual Gallup data referenced in the story:

Yes, voters under 30 overwhelmingly prefer Obama, but every age demographic in the Gallup data favors Obama, even if within the margin of error. If there was a real generational battle brewing, I would expect seniors to be as lopsidedly for McCain as youth are for Obama. That's not happening. What we are seeing is the growth of a potential electorate-wide mandate, not an inter-generational duel.

I think what this piece also misses is that young voters today don't want anything to do with a generational battle or duel. We're in the middle of two wars with mounting casualties, few indicators of success, and our friends fighting on the front lines; the economy is tanking at a time when good entry level jobs that provide health care and the opportunity to pay off our school debt are already fewer and further between; the planet is getting hotter and our nation's energy policy is the very definition of insanity.

That's a lot to take on, and if we're going to make any progress at all we will need to build intergenerational alliances with Gen Xers, Boomers, and the Silent Generation. Like the AARP says - Divided We Fail.

After all, isn't that what the Obama campaign has been all about? Moving beyond ideology and partisanship. Reaching out to all Americans to roll up our sleeves and Get. Shit. Done. You can argue whether or not Obama, in this respect, represents a new reality or just new rhetoric, but it's hard to argue with the sentiment and expressed intent of the electorate in poll after poll, news story after news story.

Unfortunately, even if young people aren't looking to engage in generational warfare, the narrative is out there, and conservatives are already leaping to take advantage of it. Which brings us to the second point, and the other article I want to reference, this time an op-ed column in today's Washington Post by Robert Samuelson:

Young Voters, Get Mad

By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, October 22, 2008; Page A19

To: Voters Under 35
Subject: Your Future
Recommendation: Get Angry

You're being played for chumps. Barack Obama and John McCain want your votes, but they're ignoring your interests. You face a heavily mortgaged future. You'll pay Social Security and Medicare for aging baby boomers. The needed federal tax increase might total 50 percent over the next 25 years. Pension and health costs for state and local workers have doubtlessly been underestimated. There's the expense of decaying infrastructure -- roads, bridges, water pipes. All this will squeeze other crucial government services: education, defense, police.

Samuelson is a right-of-center pundit who frequently writes about "entitlement" reform - one of the few areas where conservatives perceive they have an "in" with young voters - often under the guise of "helping out" young people. His arguments are very much in line with the work of organizations like Americans for Generational Equality, who stoke intergenerational strife to advance their policy agenda.

At Pushback, Matt Zeitlin gets to the heart of what Samuelson is hoping to achieve:

Robert Samuelson has written one of the most annoying types of column today, one in which he self-righteously exhorts the young to march in lockstep behind his own agenda of cutting benefits and restricting eligibility for Social Security and Medicare. Before he suggests that we young people picket the AARP (seriously), he makes all sorts of misleading claims about how baby boomers are screwing us juveniles:

Conservatives are on the brink of losing big in the upcoming election. Even before the dust settles, one of the first things they will realize is that the electoral math has changed, and they are going to need to appeal to a greater segment of youth to blunt the Democratic advantage. This intergenerational warfare narrative - focusing on "entitlement reform" - will be the wedge they try to drive between moderate Millennials and the Democratic Party. Barring radical shifts to the left in their policy proposals on the environment, military spending, and health care, it's pretty much the only card they've got.

In the coming days and months - probably as soon as exit polls are released on November 4th - this is a narrative against which we are going to have to push back hard.

Update II: Over on the Disco Biscuit's web forums, one of the young men featured in the video colorfully expresses his displeasure at being portrayed inaccurately by 20/20:

Yeah, I got fucked. I'm the second incorrect answer to rowe vs. wade or whatever. I mean let's get serious. I'm a graduating college student who answered all of the question correctly except that one and what state is John McCain from. That shit was slandered as fuck. It was kinda funny seein myself on that shit though. The funnier part is that right after I watched it I asked the like ten people sitting around me if they new what that case was and only one person knew it. Fuck the editor of that clip.

Update - I'm hearing from HeadCount that Sullivan, the segment producer, disputes that the portrayal of the girl who responded "12" to the "number of Senators" question is inaccurate. I'm waiting to see a transcript and hopefully view tape of the full interview before I issue a correction. The rest of this critique remains unchallenged by 20/20.
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On Friday at 10pm, 20/20 will run a piece on the youth vote called "Maybe It's Your Civic Duty Not To Vote," in which they suggest that uninformed voters - primarily young people - not turn out to the polls. In talking to the youth group,HeadCount, featured in the piece, it is clear that 20/20 and Stossel were less interested in discovering the truth about young voters while filming their piece than in crafting a hatchet job meant to cast doubt on the growing youth vote.

You can view the 4 minute segment here.

There is a lot that is wrong with this piece. Yes, there are many uninformed voters, but that category is not limited to young people, who are unfortunately the main target of this piece. Anyone who has ever watched Jay Leno could tell you that many Americans are uninformed about current events. Unfortunately, some see that as an excuse to rob people of their constitutional rights, and Stossel and ABC are happy to play along.

But all is not as it appears in this report. In talking with HeadCount, the group featured in the piece, it's clear that Stossel and 20/20 were not interested in giving the young people they interviewed a fair shake. They had a narrative to their story and stuck by it - facts be damned. More than that, they worked -um, creatively - to make sure their point of view dominated the piece. Here's a list of inaccuracies and selective editing that viewers won't see:

• At 1 minute into the piece, Stossel interviews two voters who can accurately answer questions about American civics, after which, far more concert-goers and "regular folks" are shown who are unable to answer similar questions. According to HeadCount, this is not an accurate representation of the percentage of interviewees who successfully answered the questions. Far more concert-goers were knowledgeable than implied by the report.
• At minute 1:20, the report shows a girl saying that there are only 12 Senators in the US. The only problem? She wasn't responding to a question about the number of US Senators, but about the number of Supreme Court Justices. Yes, she was still incorrect, but Stossel and 20/20 manipulated the footage to make her appear even less knowledgeable than she actually was.

  Staffers at HeadCount say that this is often the case with the featured interviewees, who were asked not a single question, as the report implies, but many. Many interviewees were knowledgeable about some issues, but less so when it came to other issues. The young voter responses included in the report were cherry-picked by Stossel and ABC producers to highlight only the incorrect answers.

• At 1:42, Stossel asks Marc Brownstein if voters should be "knowledgeable" (whatever that means) before casting a ballot. Brownstein replies that "there are a lot of of uneducated voters out there." But that wasn't all he said. In the full interview, Brownstein went on to explain that HeadCount distributes nonpartisan issue sheets at the tables alongside the voter registration materials the organization offers each night. That educational effort was completely left out of Stossel's report.
• Also cut out of the full report were interviews with very knowledgeable young HeadCount staffers, teachers, and youth activists - generally the most informed portion of the pool of interviewees.

HeadCount staffers who followed the camera crew throughout the day offered interesting coda to those interviews. During the filming, Andrew Sullivan, a Harvard graduate and producer of the piece, mistakenly tried to correct one young concert goer who was asked about the length of single term for a congressional representative. The young concert-goer, correctly, said two years. Sullivan, incorrectly, tried to tell them it was four. I guess Sullivan won't be voting this year?

All of this is par for the course for John Stossel, who has often had a rocky relationship with the truth. Here are just a few examples pulled from his Wikipedia page:

Controversies

[edit] Galbraith and Stossel

Liberal economist James K. Galbraith said that Stossel, in a story on laissez-faire economics in September 1999, used an out of context clip of Galbraith to make it seem that Galbraith had said nearly the opposite of what he meant. Stossel denied that Galbraith's views had been misrepresented but changed the words with which he introduced the Galbraith clip in rebroadcasts of the program.[27][28][29]

[edit] Organic Vegetables

A February 2000 story about organic vegetables on 20/20 included statements by Stossel that tests had shown that neither organic nor conventional produce samples contained any pesticide residue, and that organic food was more likely to be contaminated by E. coli bacteria. The Environmental Working Group objected to his report, mainly questioning his statements about bacteria, but also managed to determine that the produce had never been tested for pesticides. They communicated this to Stossel, but after the story's producer backed Stossel's recollection that the test results had been as described, the story was rebroadcast months later, uncorrected, and with a postscript in which Stossel reiterated his claim. Later, after a report in The New York Times confirmed the Environmental Working Group's claims, ABC News suspended the producer of the segment for a month and reprimanded Stossel. Stossel apologized, saying that he had thought the tests had been conducted as reported. However, he asserted that the gist of his report had been accurate.[30][31][32][33][34]

[edit] Televangelist Lifestyle

In a March 2007 segment about finances and lifestyles of televangelists, 20/20 aired a clip of a TV minister originally broadcast by the Lifetime Network in 1997. The clip made it seem that the minister was describing his wealth in extravagant terms, when actually, he was telling a parable about a rich man. ABC News twice aired a retraction and apologized for the error. The minister filed a lawsuit against Stossel, his source for the clip, 20/20, and ABC for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.[35][36]

Stossel, who is a self-proclaimed libertarian (a position that obviously does not extend to the freedom to vote for one's leaders), and frequent contributor to the conservative website Townhall.com, closes out the piece by highlighting the work of fellow libertarian Byan Caplan, an econ professor who made his bones espousing an elitist view of democracy in which only a select few should cast their ballots:

"Maybe 75 percent of people can name the vice president. ... The public's knowledge of politics is shockingly low," economist Bryan Caplan said.

In his book "The Myth of the Rational Voter," Caplan argues that people who know little about our government ought to stay home on Election Day.

But aren't Americans always told it's their civic duty to vote?

"This is very much like saying, 'It's our civic duty to give surgery advice,'" Caplan said. "Now, we like to think that political issues are much less complicated than brain surgery, but many of them are pretty hard. If someone doesn't know what he's talking about, it really is better if they say, 'Look, I'm just gonna leave this in wiser hands.'"

But isn't it elitist to say only some people should vote?

"Is it elitist to say only some people should do brain surgery?" Caplan said. "The bottom line is, if you don't know what you're doing, you are not doing the country a favor by voting."

Voting is serious business. Democracy works best when people educate themselves. So maybe instead of telling people things like "Rock the Vote," these groups should say "Rock or Vote."

All Americans - young and old - may not be experts on the every issue, but they are experts on their own lives. They know that they're not getting enough help. That tuition is too high and grants are too low. That they need to drive to work, and heat their house or apartment, but energy prices are too high. That they are one broken leg away from bankruptcy and that getting a loan to buy a house just became that much more unattainable. And let's face it, it's not as if the experts have that great a track record when it comes to the issues of the day, whether we're talking about the subprime housing market, the war in Iraq, or ending our addiction to fossil fuels.

Democracy is for all of us, not just a select few. As a nation, we eliminated the idea of literacy tests decades ago, and rightly so. Kudos to HeadCount for pushing back on this argument to the extent that was possible within the piece, and shame on Stossel and ABC for enabling it. Young voters have faced a hostile media for decades, always pining about youth apathy. Now, on the cusp of a record breaking turnout, for a major media outlet to question the validity of those votes on such flimsy grounds, in opposition our constitutional rights, is the height of irresponsibility. Dare I say it, it's unamerican.

If you would like to express your displeasure about this piece to ABC, send a polite but firm email to the producer, Andrew Sullivan, outlining your concerns: Andrew.G.Sullivan [at] abc [dot] com

Update: Here's another take from Stella, an organizer with Swing Semester:

Ohioans are very skeptical of voting. In 04 many of their votes were not counted. I know all of these things are designed to help with that. But in their minds it is harder to convince people to vote early. In the end it is still an absentee ballot…

I personally did register before the deadline. And I could have gone and voted early but chose not to. I want to vote on election day. As many other democrats do. While we were at the vp debate watch party last week the Obama campaign was trying to get "die hard" dems to vote early… And they were all saying no… I think that we are all so scared that someone is trying to take our vote away. And with all of the lawsuits that were filed leading up to golden week it created more tension around it. I think in the end we will get them to vote it is just going to be harder to get them to vote early…

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The AP is running a story reporting low turnout in Ohio during early voting. The numbers:

As of Monday evening with polling sites still open, projections were that about 4,000 to 5,000 voters in the state's four largest counties would have taken advantage of the policy, which survived multiple court challenges.

Elections officials were surprised by the low turnout.

"With all the hoopla we were anticipating a whole lot more," said Steve Harsman, the elections director in Montgomery County, home to Dayton.

Overall, between 20,000 and 25,000 people were expected to have voted early in person in the four counties, beginning Sept. 30. The four counties include the state's largest urban areas — Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo and Dayton — and the focal points of campaign get-out-the-vote efforts.

The Columbus Dispatch had more specific youth numbers to add to this equation:

Of the 9,280 people who had cast absentee ballots in person as of Monday, 3 percent were registered Republicans and 39 percent were Democrats, records show. The rest were unaffiliated.

Of the 2,097 people who also registered to vote before casting an absentee ballot in Franklin County, two-thirds were younger than 34 and nearly 80 percent were from Columbus.

At first blush, that's disappointing news. Not the least because the Obama campaign and independent youth organizers were pushing early voting in the state. I confess that I was a little shocked when I read the story until I talked to Tony Cani, the Political Director of the Young Democrats. Here's what Tony had to say about the situation on the ground:

I really don't think this is that big of a surprise. There is only one voting site per county open - this isn't like early voting in many other states that allows you go to a number of community polling places to cast a ballot.

So, for example, in Franklin County the polling place is in downtown Columbus, an area that has very few residents and has a very high vacancy rate even for businesses. Why would someone schlep down there to vote? It isn't' really easier or more convenient. This takes away the primary argument organizers use to get people to vote early.

I didn't realize that there were so few polling locations. That's certainly a huge obstacle to face in scaling up participation into significant numbers. It seems like those promoting early voting in the state did a poor job at managing expectations here. Though, to be honest, they were in a bit of a Catch-22. They had to talk up the potential of early voting in order to recruit volunteers and drum up interest among potential voters, but there just wasn't enough time to really make it work.