Wisconsin

Republicans just can't figure out what they want to do with young voters.

We see some momentum behind actually courting young people, which Sarah discusses in her most recent post. Conservative media outlets like Fox News, the National Review, and the Washington Examiner, are hot on Margaret Hoover's book (the great-granddaughter of Depression-inducing President Herbert Hoover), which argues that Millennials are sympathetic to the fundamental principles of conservatism and that the GOP should accordingly engage these young people. Sarah does a pretty good job of explaining why Hoover is misguided in her analysis, but the GOP establishment seems to be embracing her argument. And you know what? The civic engagement-enthusiast in me doesn't necessarily mind that; at least young people appear to be the target of some kind of outreach effort.

But while Hoover is feeling the love from conservative media, Republican officials across the country are doing everything they can to keep young people from exercising their rights as citizens. In the name of eradicating voting fraud (there are 44 one-millionths of one percent of votes impacted by voter fraud), these Republicans are actively intimidating and restricting the rights of the very same Millennials Hoover wants to attract to the Republican ranks.

The latest example? Maine Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster, who is apparently clueless on election law.

Maine Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster is claiming that college students who pay out-of-state tuition rates and vote in state are committing voter fraud.

At a press conference at the Maine State House, Webster gave the media a list of over 200 students -- their names redacted -- who paid out-of-state tuition rates but were registered to vote in the state.

[...]

...Webster provided absolutely zero evidence that the students -- the vast majority of whom were born in the late 80s and early 90s, based on Webster's list -- voted both in their home state and in Maine.

Webster doesn't understand that just because students are not originally from Maine does not mean that they aren't afforded the right to participate in the community where they live (provided they do not vote in their home state and in Maine). The Sun Journal, a Maine newspaper covering the story, describes it well.

According to Maine state law, students are eligible to register to vote in the municipality in which they attend school, as long as they have established residency there. There is not a period of time required for a person to establish residency. The University of Maine System has different guidelines to establish student residency. A student may only be granted in-state tuition if he or she has proven that she has established residency for reasons other than academic, regardless of the length of time that he or she has lived in Maine.

So yes, there are absolutely cases in which students, deemed as "out of state" by the University of Maine, would be legally and correctly registered to vote in Maine.

Again, all this is on top of other moves across the country to disenfranchise young people and minorities. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, for example, recently shepherded a law through the state legislature that would require young people to secure a photo ID in order to vote. And now he just announced the closing of 10 DMV bureaus, making it harder for young people to get those photo IDs. And it's not just a coincidence that most of these closures are happening in traditionally Democratic areas, while other DMV offices are seeing their hours extended by the governor.

Hoover might be persuading some of the Republican establishment that appealing to young voters is the trendy thing to do. But the GOP isn't about to persuade young people, who are seeing Mitt Romney-like waffling from the Grand Old Party. Are you interested in us or not? You can't have it both ways.

NYC activists are specifically paralleling the 'Walkerville' action being taken by student and community activists in Wisconsin.

FM friend Harry Waisbren asked UW-Madison student leader Max Love about it, and after hearing his genuine excitement about the national impact Wisconsin activists are having (extending to the tactics themselves), Harry posted the following--including this quote from him:

It's clear the passion and perseverance generated by the union protests in Wisconsin (affectionately known as #wiunion and now #walkerville) has spread to an entire generation. No longer will working and middle class Americans stand by as we are attacked; we won't stand, but we will sleep. The inspiration of the Arab Spring, and now of New Yorkers and Wisconsinites will spread like wildfire until we can be assured every citizen of the world has a shot at a decent lifestyle

Here are more of Harry's interviews
Emily Turonis (one of the lead organizers):

Lucas Vasquez (high school student):

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s efforts to strip his state’s public employees of their collective bargaining rights may make him the Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto of American politics in the 21st Century. In what may well be an apocryphal story, the architect of the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor is reputed to have stated after being congratulated for the success of that attack, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant.” Rather than capitulating to the Governor’s demands, Democrats and their allies in organized labor have used this attack to gear up the political equivalent of the national response to Pearl Harbor, marshaling resources and public support that completely surprised their opponents.

For the first time in decades, driven by the emergence of the Millennial Generation, the nation’s youngest politically active generation (born 1982-2003), the public is as positive about labor unions as it is about business corporations. Pew research findings show that, in the private sector, Millennials side with unions over business in disputes by 51% to 37% and, in the public sector, favor unions over government by a 56% to 32%. These attitudes are reflected in recent surveys showing that both within Wisconsin (PDF) and across the nation (PDF) Americans favor the public employee unions in their dispute with the governor. In fact, largely due to defections from Republican union members, one recent survey suggested that Walker would lose a reelection vote to his 2010 Democratic opponent if a new election were to be held today.

In a recent Pew survey, nearly equal numbers of Americans were favorable toward labor (45%) and business (47%) (PDF). This is in sharp contrast to the Reagan-Gingrich era of the 1980s and 1990s when the public was more positive about business than about labor by margins of around 15 percentage points. The Millennial Generation accounts for almost all of the narrowing of this gap. Millennials are positive about labor unions by a 2:1 margin (58% favorable to 29% unfavorable). The young cohort is far less positive about business corporations (49% favorable to 43% unfavorable). Although, in the wake of the Great Recession, older generations are less positive toward business than they were a decade or two ago, they are still narrowly more favorable toward corporations (46% each favorable and unfavorable) than toward labor (42% favorable to 44% unfavorable).

The Millennials’ endorsement of labor unions does not simply stem from a supposed tendency of young people to always support the underdog or liberal causes. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, youthful members of the individualistic and entrepreneurial Generation X (born 1965-1981), and a key Ronald Reagan support group, usually tilted toward management in its disputes with labor. Rather, the Millennial Generation has positive impressions of labor unions because it is what generational theorists have labeled a “civic generation.” Civic generations, like the GI or Greatest Generation that responded so effectively to Admiral Yamamoto’s attack, are characterized by their group-orientation, their tendency to build, reform, and utilize societal institutions, and their belief in cooperative approaches to accomplish their own and the nation’s goals.

At around 95 million, the Millennial Generation is the largest in U.S. history, but its full force has yet to be felt. In 2008, when Millennials preferred Barack Obama over John McCain by a 66% to 32% margin and accounted for 80% of the president’s popular vote margin, they comprised less than one fifth (17%) of the electorate. In 2012, when Obama runs for reelection, Millennials will account for about a quarter (24%) of those eligible to vote. In 2020, when the youngest Millennials reach voting age the generation will comprise more than a third (36%) of American adults.

As we point out in our upcoming book, Millennial Momentum: How a New Generation is Remaking America, with numbers like these the emerging generation is about to reshape all aspects of national life, including the relative positions of labor and management in the U.S. economy and American politics. The last time a civic generation so thoroughly dominated American society, as the Millennials are about to, was in the 1930’s when the GI Generation, whose numbers were equal to those of the two preceding generations combined, spearheaded labor’s drive to organize the nation’s industrial workforce. They were so successful that more than a third of all American workers were union members by the mid-1950s. In the decades after it fought and defeated the Axis, the GI Generation assumed positions of power and thoroughly shaped the nation’s institutions, just as Millennials will do in the years to come.

In the Millennial era that lies ahead, public opinion and governmental policy will be more sympathetic to labor than they have been at any time since the GI Generation ran things. Given the preference of many Millennials for public and governmental service, public employee unions should find fertile ground for organizing and for maintaining public support for a level playing field between workers and employers. That is why Governor Walker’s battle in Wisconsin and similar efforts in other states over the ability of workers to organize are likely to end in the type of defeat Admiral Yamamoto suffered, and why the decades ahead are likely to be better for organized labor than the previous few decades.

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are fellows of NDN and the New Policy Institute and co-authors of “Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics” and the upcoming “Millennial Momentum: How a New Generation is Remaking America.”

Bumped. -Craig

Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog Voting Matters

By Nathan Henderson-James

Just yesterday we noted the right way to report on charges of voter fraud and the wrong way to go about it. We explained how the news media had been gamed by people with a partisan interest in the outcome of elections to gin up hysteria to engage in voter intimidation and voter disenfranchisement efforts.

Well, the partisans are back at it in Wisconsin, but this time the press is following the lead of Virginia journalists and scrutinizing the claims rather than simply reprinting the press release.

Here’s the backstory. The community organization ACORN has recently completed a voter registration drive in Milwaukee aimed at historically disenfranchised populations like low-income folks and African-Americans. The drive assisted voters complete some 35,000 cards. So far so good.

However, some of ACORN’s canvassers were caught forging cards in order to get paid for not doing the work. Under Wisconsin law all cards filled out, completely or incompletely, fraudulently or not, are required to be turned in. Out of the 35,000 cards, ACORN and Board of Elections officials estimate that about 1500-2000 of them had problems. The bulk of those were simple incompletes, but about 200 or so were clearly attempts by canvassers to defraud both ACORN and the state of Wisconsin by submitting false cards.

The traditional media has actually done a fairly good job reporting the story, going into great detail on how the cards were caught, the quality control procedures used by ACORN, and the context of the numbers involved versus the total number of cards submitted. This reportage has been ably supplemented by bloggers like Cory Liebmann at One Wisconsin Now and Capper at Cognitive Dissonance.

But, of course, this situation has served as an opportunity for conservative partisans to immediately pick up their calls for voter disenfranchisement policies such as voter ID. Such a policy would ironically, or perhaps not so ironically, actually push down the voter participation rates among those folks who most rely on voter registration drives to bring them into the civic participation process.

Here’s choice quote from Pete DiGaudio who writes as The Texas Hold ‘Em Blogger,

“Well, yes, I actually do support voter suppression. I am in favor of suppressing the vote of dead people, nonexistent people, convicted felons, illegal aliens, people voting more than once, et al. Every time one of these people votes, it cancels out my legitimate vote.

A simple thing like photo ID for voting would eliminate these fraudulent voters when they showed up at the polls.”

Project Vote’s report The Politics of Voter Fraud (PDF) has consistently pointed out that there simply isn’t widespread voter fraud in the United States and any fraudulent voting has never been tied to voter registration fraud, which is what has partisans so breathless and hyperbolic.

But the rush to point to a solution like voter ID seems not to be bothered by facts. Like the fact that the so-called fraud every partisan points to is always centered on voter registration cards. Well, voter ID isn’t going to stop canvassers from wanting to get paid for not doing the work and it isn’t going to stop states like Wisconsin from requiring that every card be turned in regardless of its accuracy, completeness, or legitimacy and it’s definitely not going to help elections officials catch bad cards.

The truth is that the laws as written and enforced catch such problems. The mere fact of this story in the media means the system in Milwaukee works the way it is supposed to, catching problem cards. Voter ID, on the other hand stops something called “voter impersonation”, which just doesn’t happen in the Untied States. Of the 24 convictions won by the US Department of Justice between 2002 and 2005 for voter fraud, most of them were for problems with submitting false or illegal absentee ballots. Voter ID laws do nothing to fix this problem. But what they are great at is stopping otherwise eligible voters from casting ballots.

And that’s how it works – raise loud cries of outrage over an illegal act that was caught using the safeguards that were put in place for just that situation, raise questions about the integrity of the entire elections system, and offer a solution that would not stop the identified problem and would, in fact, stop significant numbers of specific groups, generally groups who are already the most disenfranchised, from participating in elections.

The DNC Youth Council is getting ready to hold three more trainings on how to become delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August:

Last week, we held our first conference call training on the process to be a delegate from New Mexico. The training was extremely successful and we are eager to get underway with our next round of calls.

Below one will find a listing of some of our upcoming calls. Please spread the word to as many people as possible about these. On each call we will be joined by a member of that respective state's party to go over the process to be a Congressional District, PLEO, or At-Large delegate to the Democratic National Convention. In addition to the specific training, we will be sure to provide information on how to get more involved with the State Party and other youth organizations.

The upcoming calls are:
Georgia - March 31st at 5pm EST
Phone: 866-810-8093
Code: 678-893-3989

Utah - April 1st at 6pm EST
Phone: 866-810-8093
Code: 822-976-6817

Wisconsin - April 2nd at 7pm EST
Phone: 866-810-8093
Code: 822-976-6817

The final results from the Wisconsin primary are in, and CIRCLE is done crunching the data. Once again the story is the same - youth turnout in the Democratic Primary almost doubled, increasing from 91,120 in 2004 to 175,841 in yesterday's contest. Young voters were 16 percent of the Democratic electorate, up from 11 percent in 2004. The overall turnout rate for young voters (Republican and Democrats) was 25 percent, 11 points lower than the overall turnout rate of 36 percent.

Yet again, young voters chose Sen. Barack Obama by wide margins. 70 percent of young voters chose Sen. Obama over 26 percent who voted for Clinton. Obama performed slightly better among 18 - 24 year olds than he did the older cohort, but the differences were modest at best.

The big story continues to be the massive turnout in favor of Democrats. The graph we produced here after Super Tuesday, already out of date after last week's Potomac Primaries, is even more off now, but still quite illustrative of just how large an advantage young voters will be for the Democrats this cycle.

As I describe in my book, Youth to Power, Senator Obama didn't create this youth movement. It began back in 2003 and showed its strength in 2004 when the youth vote increased substantially for the first time in over a decade. We saw it again in 2006 when a wave of youth participation voted 60 - 38 percent in favor of Democrats and helped drive Sen. Jon Tester, Sen. Jim Webb, and Rep. Joe Courtney into office.

What's happening now is that Senator Obama is tapping into - and amplifying - that movement through a combination of message and - most importantly - substantial investment into reaching out and engaging young voters. The Democratic Party and candidates up and down the ticket would do well to learn some lessons from the Obama campaign. They too can benefit from the increased progressivism and participation of young voters if they reach out, speak to our issues, and put real resources into organizing young voters in their districts.

Bumped - Looks like Obama took both Wisconsin and Hawaii, as expected. According to CNN exit polling, youth share of the electorate in Wisconsin increased to 16%, and early exit polling data shows Obama dominating Clinton 3 - 1 among 18 - 29 year olds. We'll see how that adjusts in the next few hours. There are no exit polls for Hawaii at this time (time difference, maybe?). I'll have a more full analysis tomorrow after CIRCLE crunches the data on youth turnout.
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Both Hawaii and Wisconsin cast their ballots for the Democratic nominee today. There's no prior data for young voters in Hawaii, but here's a preview of Wisconsin. As usual, most of this data is courtesy of CIRCLE.

Youth Population: 895,478
Youth Share of Electorate: 22%
Youth Share in 2004: 11%
White non-Hispanic: 84%
Other Race/Ethnicity: 16%
College Students: 22%

Obama is the favorite in Wisconsin, though the polls have been tight in these final weeks. I heard on the news this morning that there was recently a rally for him at the University of Wisconsin, Madison attended by over 20,000 people. Wisconsin also has something of a history for youth activism, the race is increasingly tight, what with the media storyline describing this as a dog fight for every last delegate. And the campaigns have gotten nasty with dueling negative ads in the state. In other words, it's a highly competitive environment. I'll be watching to see just how high youth turnout is, and whether or not it approaches young voter's potential share of the electorate.