voter turnout

One of my all-time favorite television shows is HBO's The Wire. So it's a little surreal to feel like I'm living in an episode. No, I'm not involved in the drug trade or police department. I'm not a stevedore losing my union job, and I'm not a school teacher struggling with No Child Left Behind. Like the reporters and police officers in the 5th and final season of the show, though, I feel like my work, and the work of many of my colleagues are not being adequately supported. In short, the youth vote community is being asked "to do more with less."

As I've written many times before, 2004 was a boom year for youth organizing as the progressive movement built many new institutions (and strengthened others) to reach out to young voters. There were two driving forces behind this boom: entrepreneurial activism on the part of young people, and a willingness among donors to take risks and support that work. The results were impressive and verified by independent research.

This year, the "surging" youth vote is one of the most important stories of the election cycle, and one would think that interest in moving as many young voters to the polls as possible would be a high priority. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case. Many of the organizations responsible for engaging young voters in 2004 and 2006, and many new organizations working to fill holes in the youth engagement sphere, are struggling to raise funds and scale up their operations for the fall.

"As far as I'm aware, all the youth voting groups put together haven't secured more than $10 Million toward their budgets in 2008," said Billy Wimsatt, founder and former executive director of the League of Young Voters. "If the $40 Million figure from 2004 is correct, this means we are seeing only one quarter of of the funding for youth voting as in 2004. This is a staggering decrease."

Indeed, it is. At a time when expectations for the youth vote are at their highest, youth organizers are not being provided with the resources they need to make good on that promise and capitalize on the energy and excitement among the country's youngest voters. Youth organizers - who have worked for the last 5 years to build up to this moment when our peers could potentially tip a Presidential election - are in a very bad spot. In an election cycle that may see our biggest victory in decades, we do not have the resources to play more than a small part in that victory.

The reasons behind this drastic decline in support are varied. Some point to the success of the Obama campaign in turning out young voters, and a desire on the part of potential funders to put their money "where it is most needed." Others point to statements made by the Obama campaign itself asking that funders not support "outside efforts" on the campaign trail. The tightening economy is also a potential - though less likely - culprit.

This isn't about ego or a turf war between the Obama campaign and independent youth organizers. It's about how the funding cycle works and the long-term health of youth organizing on the progressive (and Democratic) side of the political aisle. As we've seen, Obama's youth support comes almost entirely from college-educated youth who make up only a fraction of the eligible voting population. Everything I hear from inside the Obama campaign points to a college-based youth strategy in the battleground states identified by the campaign. Obama can't and shouldn't be allowed to run the youth component of this campaign cycle alone. His campaign needs the help of complimentary, independent youth organizations to reach out to those non-college voters and get them to the polls - not just to secure his own election, but for the election of down-ballot candidates as well.

The consequences of this dearth in funding go far beyond this single election and may have a negative impact on progressive youth infrastructure well into the midterm elections. As David Simon himself said, you don't do more with less. You do less with less. That will show when youth organizations and donors study their 2008 GOTV efforts and plan presentations for their work in 2009 and 2010. Less impressive results in those post-election studies will likely yield a smaller investment from donors. With a continued decrease in funding, our nascent movements' capabilities to move votes will slowly begin to wither.

Meanwhile, we'll have to wait and see whether the Obama campaign was a worthwhile gamble. And let's be clear - that is exactly what donors are doing by withholding support. They are betting that the Obama campaign will be able to move a sufficient number of young voters on its own, and that those mobilization efforts will continue as long as - and beyond - an Obama Presidency.

Will that organization be the shining savior that continues to effectively mobilize young voters in 2009 and 2010? Or will the Obama administration focus on its own goals and brush aside our concerns about continued youth mobilization as easily as they brushed off concerns about his votes on FISA? In four or six years, will young people (middle and high schoolers now) have the same motivation to support President Obama as do those who carry his campaign today? How about eight years? Is that something you want to bet a movement on? I don't.

There's an important story in the New York Times today about student voting rights. Down in Prairie View Texas, two voting rights cases are underway. The first involves the use of voter fraud charges by the Attorney General to intimidate black and hispanic (Democratic) voters in the country. Recent reports indicate that of 26 voter fraud cases brought by the Attorney General, all were against Democrats and almost all were against black or hispanic voters.

The second involves hundreds of students who were denied their right to vote in 2006:

Before the 2006 election, Judge Charleston said in an interview, he personally registered about 1,000 students. But on Election Day, he said, hundreds of them were turned away as not registered to vote. The registration cards were later found in county offices, he said.

Ellen C. Shelburne, the county tax assessor and registrar, who took office in January 2007, said she had recently been questioned by investigators from Mr. Abbott’s office and had told them that she knew nothing about the matter. Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for Mr. Abbott, said, “We cannot comment on ongoing investigations.”

Waller County has a long history of voter suppression, but we don't have to go back all that far to know that this will be important in November. During the primaries, Waller County purposefully tried to discourage student voting by locating early voting locations far from campus at the county seat. Students protested that decision at the time and marched over 7 miles to cast their ballots:

I expect tactics like this will become common in many places this November, particularly after the Supreme Court issued its ruling on the Indiana voter ID law. Student voter suppression happens every year. It occurred in 2004, it occurred in 2006, and those were elections cycles in which most of the political class did not think the youth vote would matter.

This year, the youth vote could be up to 25% of the electorate and will likely vote around 66 - 33 Democratic. Does anyone have doubts that the Republicans will do all they can to suppress that vote?

Harpers is running an interview with Sydney Blumenthal about his new book. During the interview, they got around to discussing the youth vote.

Shorter Blumenthal: they didn't turnout historically, probably won't this year, and if they do it won't be as big a deal as everyone is making it out to be:

4. In your analysis of the transformation of the electorate that brought the Democrats victory in 2006, you focus on the youth vote and note its sharp trajectory into the Democratic camp. Do you consider this to be a stable pillar on which to build a new Democratic majority? Young voters are not only less inclined to actually vote than other age groups, they are also famously fickle in their political attitudes. Isn’t it in fact only natural that a carefree college student will embrace liberal attitudes from which a later white-collar worker with a mortgage and children may turn?

The younger generation, responding to Bush’s radicalism, is emerging as a liberal one. Its development may be part of a natural cycle as the children of a liberal generation, just as their parents were children of the New Deal generation. Bush has been the formative experience in their political education. Yet the idea that the entrance of a new generation of young people will suddenly transform American politics is by now among the oldest, most romantic and least persuasive notions of so-called “new politics.” Proposed in the aftermath of the 1968 election, many Democrats pinned their hopes on the youth vote. That generation, my own, was and still is the largest numerically and proportionally in American history. Rather than try to analyze the internal reasons why the Democratic Party had come apart in the late 1960s, theorists suggested that a new generation would rescue the Democrats as a political deus ex machina. In a 1971 book, Changing Sources of Power: American Politics in the 1970s, Frederick G. Dutton, a former aide to Robert F. Kennedy, wrote: “Voter turnout increases with education, affluence, political awareness and social influence, and those attributes are all demonstrably higher in the coming generation than in any other new voting group in history.” This idea was one of the key underlying assumptions of the George McGovern candidacy in 1972. (McGovern, alas, lost 49 states.) A 1970 book, The New Majority, by Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg, describing the Republican sources of power as the “unyoung, unpoor and unblack” proved more prescient.

Voters under 30 during this campaign year have had a greater impact within Democratic primaries in terms of numbers and influence than they will in the general election. The Pew poll of May 8 now shows a growing generation gap, though “modest by the standards of the 1960s.” Yet a majority of those over 50 years old, according to Pew, do not share younger voters’ view, for example, of Barack Obama as “inspiring” or even as “patriotic.”

The “new politics” promising a youth-led renaissance, the transcendence of partisanship and the withering away of social need through the greening of America ended in tears 35 years ago. It’s a dream that apparently defies its repeated deaths.

I've got to disagree with Blumenthal. First off, the Boomers were not, contrary to popular belief, a liberal generation. Their values may have differed greatly from that of their parents, but as a generation they did not vote monolithically as we're seeing young people do today. Boomers are a split generation whose members have clashed for decades. That's what the culture war is . . .

Second, he assumes that young people today - their motivations, their engagement, the size of their generation, the mood of the electorate - are the same as back in '68 and in all those other elections when young people failed to turnout. This, fortunately, is not the case. Young voters are voting largely as a single voting block - a trend whose strength will only increase during the general election when Obama picks up Clinton's supporters. Thanks to new online tools like YouTube and FaceBook and MyBarackObama.com, engagement is easier, higher, and more effective than ever. Thanks to real field campaigns by third party groups and Students for Barack Obama, young voters are being incorporated into campaigns like we haven't seen in decades - since even before 1968, when LBJ kicked the college democrats out of the party. Obama's new 50-state voter registration plan will only amplify these trends.

Millennials are also a larger generation than the Baby Boom and this year it is highly likely that their turnout will top the record 55% set in 1972. I would argue that what we've seen in the primaries thus far isn't an outsized influence from young voters, but rather just a taste of what youth participation will be in November.

The generations are very different as well. As Strauss and Howe outlined in their work, and as Winograd and Hais just elucidated in their new book, Millennial Makeover, Boomers were an idealist generation. Their involvement in politics has been largely personal (moral), and outside the system. They rebelled against their civic-minded parents. Millennials are the opposite. they are a civic generation that prizes participation within the system and community engagement. Comparing the two generations is like apples and oranges.

Shorter me: This isn't 1968, '72, or '84. Millennials are different than their Boomer and Xer predecessors. Blumenthal's ideas are equally out of date.

Rock the Vote has updated their 2008 youth turnout fact sheet (PDF). It's got a very handy chart measuring Republican and Democratic youth turnout this year, and measuring that turnout over previous cycles.

There are two big takeaways from the data:

• Youth turnout is up 109% over the previous cycle.
• Young voters are increasing their turnout, measured as their "share of the electorate," at greater rates than every other age demographic.

The fact sheet also has this great visual comparing Republican and Democratic youth turnout to each other and to the previous comparable presidential cycle.

Been traveling a lot this week and my browser has a gagillion open tabs of stuff I meant to blog. Here they are. I'll try to have a recap of the Demos Better Deal Conference posted later.

• Paul Rosenberg has a detailed post documenting all the ways in which McCain has failed to support the troops. - Open Left
• The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) agrees with Webb - McCain is full of it in his opposition to the GI Bill. And they have the stats to prove it. - Think Progress
• Micah Sifry has an interesting post on "Voter File 2.0" and Catalist's plans for the future. - Tech President
• The blogosphere is starting to wonder why YDA and CDA Super delegates have yet to endorse Senator Obama. - Americablog
• Rock the Vote has calculated that Young Voter turnout this year increased by 2.2 million over turnout in the 2000 and 2004 primaries. - Rock the Vote
• More reportage on Obama's success in raising small dollar donations, particularly from young people. - The Politico
• Congress is fast-tracking a student loan bill, though whether that is a good or bad thing for students in the long-term is still unclear to me. - The Politico
• The Millennial Makeover authors argue that Clinton and Obama supporters arguing over the strength of their coalitions just don't get it; demography is destiny for the Democratic Party. - Huffington Post
• Where is the next generation of philanthropists? - Tactical Philanthropy
• More kvetching about the lack of protest music. Will they never stop whining about this? - Huffington Post
• Clay Shirky discusses our "cognitive surplus" and what it means for human information production and organizing. - Open Left
• Andrew Kohut explores the widening generation gap in how voters cast their ballots. - New York Times

There are likely four reasons why youth turnout in Iowa and New Hampshire has been so high:

1. Outreach by the campaigns - particularly the Obama campaign
2. Continued outreach by organizations outside the Democratic Party that has been ongoing since 2004.
3. A civic spirit and anger at the current state of the country among Millennials.

The fourth reason, and I think one of the untold stories about both the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary, is that both states practice EDR: Election Day Registration.

Election Day reports of record turnouts saw may precincts running out of ballots and demanding more from the SOS office, particularly in some college towns. The Progressive State Network is already reporting that in at least one precinct, EDR made up 10% of all voters. National studies by Demos and Election Line have shown that states with EDR have significantly higher turnout, and that EDR can be a huge boost to youth participation, increasing turnout by as much as 14% among younger voters. As I've written before, this is already the case in Iowa, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Maine, Montana, Idaho, Wisconsin and Wyoming. And there are active campaigns to implement EDR happening in California, Maryland, Michigan, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon and Vermont. If we're looking to expand the electorate and bring more people - particularly young people - into the political system, expanding EDR to all states is clearly a necessary first step.

This has been, and likely will continue to be, a battleground between those who want greater youth participation - and greater participation overall - and those who don't. Even as Iowa and New Hampshire are showing us the benefits of lowering barriers to participation, conservatives are working to raise more barriers to keep poor, elderly, black, and young people away from the polls. A voter ID law originating in Indiana is currently before the Supreme Court, and it is likely that the Roberts Court will uphold the law. As Steve Rosenfeld notes in a piece on AlterNet, it is laws like these that keep voter turnout rates so low among certain groups - particularly young people and african americans:

The real barrier to student voting in 2008 is not admonitions from the Clintons. It is a patchwork of state laws, according to Rosenfeld, that discourage student voting. Arizona, for instance, rejects out-of-state driver's licenses as an acceptable voter ID. The same is true in Indiana. New Hampshire requires students to register at local government offices. Virginia allows local election officials to decide if a dormitory qualifies as a "domicile." Some do, Rosenfeld said, and some do not. New Mexico restricts the number of voter registration forms one person may carry at a time. And Texas has new penalties for "improperly" helping people with absentee ballots.

Many of these laws -- particularly the voter ID laws and restrictions on registration drives -- have come into effect since the last presidential election. State legislatures, usually with Republican majorities, adopted the measures to combat "voter fraud," or what the GOP has said is people impersonating other voters for partisan benefit. What's notable about these laws is they affect an entire state electorate, while the problems provoking their adoption almost always concern a handful of individuals. That disparity has led many voting rights advocates to say these laws are meant to discourage Democratic voters.

These laws do little to make our elections more secure or reliable. Actual instances of voter fraud of the kind that could be prevented by stricter ID laws is virtually non-existent. All these laws do is limit the size of the electorate to keep certain groups out of the ballot box. I know it's hard to focus on anything other than the election during a Presidential cycle - and for all I know very little chance of implementing new voting laws until after November. But come January 2009, implementing EDR should be one of the primary goals of youth groups - non partisan and partisan alike. Higher turnout is the key to getting more power for young people in our political system.

Was reading this mostly excellent article on Obama's attempt to organize High School students when I came across this money-quote (emphasis mine):

Kader, who's met Obama twice and says his local student field representative visits the school regularly, argues that it's not just Obama's relative youth at 46, symbolism or his stances that she finds appealing.

''I think most younger people are supporting him because of how much attention he's paying to us,'' she said.

Hale-frickin-lulah! This is so right on and in line with everything that research tells us. Young people will participate if they are asked, but the campaigns and parties stopped asking a long time ago, locking us into a vicious cycle of non-participation.

What's amazing is that this may be the first piece of professional journalism I've seen that hits this nail on the head. Good for McClatchy.

Note to the reporter, though - Dean did not lose Iowa because youth failed to turnout, and those numbers on 18-24 year old turnout from the Iowa Democratic Party are wrong. Please refer to this helpful document in future stories. I emailed her complimenting the piece but correcting this information.

A few stories Around the Tubes:

• The Miami Herald reports on the "apathetic streak" in young Florida voters. Despite the national trend that 18- to 29-year-olds are taking an increased interest in voting, Florida saw DECLINING youth voter turnout last year. According to one Floridian, many "are very preoccupied. Some people don't think it's very important." I totally get that -- I mean, what's important about the future of our counrty? Plus, it's not like Florida ever determines elections...The incredibly interesting site Republican Youth Majority represents the pro-choice, pro-environment, and fiscally conservative future of the Republican party. The site seems to suggest a clear ideological shift in young conservatives, who may be able to work with young progressives in the future.
• Julianne Malveaux of USA Today discusses the inherent unfairness of unpaid internships towards low-income students. Internships are an increasingly important part of resumes, putting working kids, who can't afford to work for free, at yet another disadvantage in the business and political worlds.