tim ryan

One of the youngest Congressman serving is Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio. His office has been one leading the pack in youth and technology outreach for the past few years, but his urgency to listen to young voters has given a unique perspective many members lack.

With a connectivity to the future and an eagerness to bring more young people to policy and government, it isn't difficult to understand why he is one of the most outspoken members of the 30 Something Caucus.

Rep. Ryan sat down with me last week to discuss his outreach to young constituents and his hopes for post-election youth engagement.

Crossposted from Rock the Trail

A new bit of research from EMILY's List was released today that shows some details about new registrants and down ballot candidates.

According to their research

"Of the 326,823 newly registered (this year) voters in North Carolina, 176,806 are registered Democrats, just 21,672 are registered Republicans."

But when it comes to down ballot races there is a bit of a disconnect

"65 percent of younger people believe whoever is elected President will make “a lot of difference” in their lives; this number drops to 32 when asked about Governor and 26 percent when asked about Congress"

As such, the research says we risk serious drop off from these new voters for a complete lack of connectivity between them. I don't see any surprises. Thursday I walked around the hill in DC and asked members of Congress about young voters. The video is to come, but Rep. Tim Ryan, one of the youngest members of Congress said it best when he told me that before he ran, young voters didn't really turnout much. But when he ran he made a point to talk to young voters and made a concerted effort to do outreach to young voters. The result? SURPRISE! Youth turnout increased.

If you build it... they will come...

EMILY's List commissioned two pairs of focus groups among young voters in NC. The release says they

"measured the potential impact of various approaches to encourage down ballot voting including (1) linking other candidates to Obama, selling them on the notion that every leader needs a “team” behind him, (2) probing their support for straight party ticket voting, and (3) exploring more comparative approaches where we attack Bush and his downballot allies and remind these voters that Bush may be gone, but his ideas and policies could outlive his administration."

No word on if they thought about maybe just doing more outreach to young voters directly from the local candidates....

The results show, among other things, that "people resist the idea of casting an uninformed vote." This is consistent with our research that shows that the voters paying the most attention also tend to be the most involved.

Further, "straight party ticket voting is not attractive for many in the groups." This is consistent with our research that showed that young people don't find the party system an attractive option in general, which is why new registrants tend to like to be independent or decline to state if given those option. I don't know if these are ok in North Carolina.

"Young people do understand that the other offices are important and have a greater direct impact on their lives. However, this is not a top-of-mind perception among many participants in our groups. As noted above, they know almost nothing about other candidates running for statewide office. . . further, young people understand implicitly that Barack Obama needs a “team” and needs allies down ballot to change the country "

There's more but it goes on for several pages. One of my favorite tid bits was this "Almost everyone in the groups belongs to a social networking site, mostly “Facebook,” and “MySpace,” but they tend to ignore ads on the sites."

I reiterate that the #1 way for candidates to garner youth support this election is to do active outreach on social network sites, with youth targeted field outreach, and candidate outreach. If you or a candidate you know would like to learn how, don't hesitate to contact us.

We've been having this ongoing conversation about better access to our government both as a form of transparency and as a way to connect with our Representatives who both serve and ... represent us in Congress. We've even watched as John Culberson (R-TX) and Tim Ryan (D-OH) battled it out in real time over the Energy Bill on Twitter.

This week Culberson has waged his own mini-war against the House for shutting down his twitter activity.

On July 8th Culberson Tweeted

1. " I just learned the Dems are trying to censor Congressmen's ability to use Twitter Qik YouTube Utterz etc - outrageous and I will fight them."

2. "Dem "Supreme Soviet" leadership of House would have to approve every Twitter before I could post it!!!"

3. They want to require prior approval of all posts to any public social media/internet/www site by any member of Congress!!! "

7. " I also must have a preapproved disclaimer on every Tweet that it is an official communication from a federal official for official business"

They go on. He's fighting about this in a very partisan way, but with Tim Ryan in the same boat, its not a partisan issue....(I agree with Dave from TP on this) its a tech issue.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, our Franking Rules are just so out of step with where we are (and indeed where we're going) that there needs to be some kind of update. Most notably, there should be an update that encompass new technologies that will be created in the next half hour to two years. This whole telenovella actually began as an attempt to make our rules better, if you can believe it...

This began when, in attempts to "get it," ...

"Democratic Representative Michael Capuano sent a letter last month, written in bureaucratese, to a House administrative committee, trying to propose that Congress should create a more official way to represent official congressional communication on the Internet. The letter, dated June 24th, has been widely circulated by a Twitter user and Republican representative named John Culberson, who rallied congressional allies against the proposal...

Capuano is trying to update an existing set of rules that requires House members to submit some web and email communications for approval before being sent. Here’s the text of the rules in question, that I found via nonprofit The Sunlight Foundation’s Open House Project blog post on the matter."

Despite their own convoluted confusion and explanations, the two sides seem to both want the same thing.

"Culberson, as you’ll see if you watch his Qik video, is sincere about his desire to let congress members say whatever they want on any service. Capuano, via his press release, pays homage to the same idea, even if he can’t effectively translate that sentiment into his proposals."

Despite Culberson's partisan blame, he's aligned many supporters from the left as well as the Sunlight Foundation who has started the site Let Our Congress Tweet. While we all seem to be on the same side, its also important to note the members who don't have a side at all on this issue, because they have no idea what the Internets iz. Much less what The Facebook and the Google are up to.

Hopefully, these new dramas will bring to light a better understanding for members who are a bit technophobic or who have staffers that are fearful of losing control. Lord only knows what could happen... Representatives say the Darndest Things!! Holding people's feet to the fire might become the standard, and people like you and me might be able to lobby our members in real time on Facebook through our status updates. Ahh to dream....