young unmarried women

This was on SNL last week and it gets funnier every time I see it, but I keep seeing those Brink Home Security commercials and I concur they really do play on this unrealistic fear that all men want to come into your home and kill you if you're young and single.

In a report released yesterday by Women's Voices Women Vote (pdf) evidence of continued voting problems are particularly high among women.

According to a report on the... report in the Chicago Sun Times

"While the study discusses obstacles to voter participation in general, it focuses on the unique impact it has on traditionally under-represented groups who comprise the majority (52%) of the population -- African Americans, Latinos, unmarried women and young voters -- it is unmarried women who drive this majority and the mission of Women's Voices Women Vote."

I would say it amazes me, but I'm not the least bit shocked. Particularly, since Oklahoma's Legislature which had promised to allow previsions for students to vote with their ID's, passed a bill that will go to a vote of the people to vote provisional ballot if they don't have an ID or voter card.

Anything to reduce the power of that 52% right?

As TWW accurately says "If women were the only voters, the Democrats would win in a landslide every time. If men were the only voters, the GOP would be the left-wing party." But I digress.

This 2008 Brennan Center map below also illustrates the state variations related to identification needed to vote:

(click to make larger)

"Moreover, because of unclear and complicated rules in states and counties regarding who receives a provisional ballot, some voters who should get provisional ballots are turned away from the polls and others who qualify for a regular ballot are given provisional ballots."

The report goes on to say that in 2004 the top five problems at the polls had to do with provisional ballots. Not just the highest problem... but the top five. Fer realz.

Mike reported almost two years ago about unmarried single women and the important role they would play in the 2008 election. What WVWV found recently was that not only were they key players, they are also an ever increasing demographic.

"Unmarried women are the fastest growing large demographic in the population, comprising 25% of the voting age population," said Page Gardner, president and founder of WVWV. . . "Challenges that affect unmarried women most particularly, include greater mobility and access to less economic resources -- they have the highest poverty rate of any cross-section of the adult population," said Gardner. "Yet it is exactly this portion of the population for whom we make voter registration most difficult in this country."

The study also makes great mention of Election Day Registration (aka Same Day Registration) saying that in areas that have it there was a indeed a higher turnout - but further those areas lead in the highest turnout areas in the country.

In a report (pdf) from our good friends over at Demos, EDR has increased turnout as much as 10% in some areas and the administrative costs for EDR are often times lower than the non-EDR states.

Finally, the WVWV data outlines "the the most significant obstacles to voter participation."

1. "Voter Registration: controversies over voter registration produced more litigation than any other election issue in 2008, primarily due to outdated and problematic voter registration systems. By allowing reforms such as universal registration and greater uniformity of registration standards, many registration issues could be resolved. (emphasis mine)
2. Absentee and Early Voting: the rate of voters casting ballots via absentee or early voting methods is on the rise (38 million Americans in 2008). However, the rules surrounding these methods vary significantly from state to state. . .
3. Voter Identification Requirements: lack of consistency across state lines in relation to the types of ID required (e.g., driver's license, proof of citizenship) as well as whether ID is required at all, make it confusing and cumbersome to register and/or cast a ballot.
4. Provisional Ballots: among the top five complaints logged by the Election Protection Coalition's hotline during the 2004 election were problems with provisional ballots. . .
5. Voter Lists: state regulations are notably inconsistent when it comes to the maintenance of voter registration lists -- from who updates them to how the state maintains them, whether state or local election officials allow for name variations, and how and when the lists are purged."

If you don't read Onely.org you're missing out. They advocate the single life which isn't easy to do in this society so focused on that big wedding and that equally big divorce before that big second marriage in Vegas!

This week they profiled a blog that is unbelievable and I didn't know existed - as part of their series Some like it Single. The blog Marrying Millennial which focuses on tearing apart the campaign currently trying to persuade young people to get married. Spearheaded by the Brookings Institute, the National Marriage Resource Center, and the Bush Administrations Department of Health and Human Services the campaign has worked in cahoots to fund The Healthy Marriage Initiative or further to federally fund ad campaigns to uphold marriage not to mention including marriage incentives as part of a welfare reform package.

The Marrying Millennial blogger isn't buying it

"Your generation has given me no reason to subject myself to marriage. Your generation has increased the divorce rate to higher than 50%. I have watched your rushed/forced marriages fail over and over again. You have told me to educate myself and establish myself, and I am doing so. Therefore marriage will have to wait until its most convenient for me and my life plans. Your marriages are taxed. They are formalized. They require red tape, and signatures, and penalties. . . I have learned from your mistakes."

Its no wonder our generation has been so skeptical of conservatives! Clearly paying people to get married and pretend to love each other and have a family doesn't actually make it happen. Who knew!?

Onely's review of Marrying Millennial is glowing and I couldn't say it better myself:

"She points out that the campaign’s narrow-mindedness and lack of innovation will actually turn young people away from marriage, that the campaign short-circuits young people’s attempts at exploration and self-expansion, and that believing in God and religion doesn’t mean that you have to think marriage is the magic cure for all social ills. In one of her most frightening posts, she shows the obscene amounts of money that the current director of the National Healthy Marriage Resource Center (NHMRC), Mary Myrick, once charged to the Oklahoma government when she was a consultant to their state marriage initiative in 2001."

Last month Bella DePaulo at the Huffington Post reported that there is indeed an HHS ad campaign designed to encourage marriage. No word yet on whether Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius would continue the program under the Obama Administration but something tells me that she might have a few revisions or perhaps even some better more effective ways of spending that money.

DePaulo quotes a USA Today piece which says

"Research suggests a bevy of benefits for those who marry, including better health, greater wealth and more happiness for the couple, and improved well-being for children."

And then proceeds to debunk that statement with evidence of wealth coming from federal tax dollars which could equate happiness and high income brackets with better health care which disproportionately helps those who can afford it. Of course they are wealthier and healthier and richer! Our government is giving them the tax structure to ensure its so.

Onely further requests of anyone who might be researching projects like this if there is a breakdown of federal funds allocated both to the ad campaign, marriage incentives given to couples, and how much in total the project cost. I second that request calling on a top to bottom review of the extensive amount of waste spent on this project and would further like to ask that Dr. James Dobsen send all proceeds from his Focus on Marriage seminars to pay the tax payers back.

Marrying Millennial posted a blog Wednesday where she announced she was combing through Recovery.gov (the Obama Administration's effort of creating transparency so tax payers can see where their money is going). She contacted the Obama Administration asking questions but isn't holding her breath about a reply.. after all she's still waiting for a response to the letters her high school class sent to President Bush in 2005 asking him about the project.

On a hometown note she looked through Mary Myrick's Public Strategies, Inc website for information about who this woman is and what she's up to.

"Public Strategies Inc. is Mary's public relations firm that manages the accounts for pro-marriage campaigns. Mary is very involved in making money off of selling marriage." . .

"Not only does she own her own firm, but she is the founder and president of Oklahoma Marriage Initiative."

And here she is on Facebook! She's so forward thinking! Oddly enough she's friends with Jim Roth the former Corporations Commissioner in Oklahoma and openly gay elected official. I bet Jim believes in marriage... but it might not be the kind Mary likes...

Either way Marrying Millennial is a brilliant project whether you want the big white dress or not. Stay tuned to see what the feds do when they find out how much money has been going to these programs.

Disclaimer: Please note there is no coincidental meaning behind this being posted on the week Mike is getting married. I fully support his and Leah's union and wish them all the best on such a wonderful life together.

David Frum wrote an interesting blog on New Majority, a conservative site that is pushing for ... well.... a new kind of republican majority (something like what Meghan McCain is pushing).

Starting out, Frum is dealing with the Bristol Palin/Levi break up. He says its good that its over, so that she can go back to her life rather than pretending to have a life for the political appeasement of the Republican Party. Regardless of whether this is true or not and totally disregarding the saga of the love life of someone I don't know nor do I concern myself with - the political side of this is noteworthy.

Frum says that the fact that Bristol was required to keep up appearances with Levi as a happy couple is the kind of "out of date generation" thinking that will ultimately prevent the GOP from being able to connect with any audience outside of their existing one.... which as we've seen hasn't been too successful in recent years.

"Take a look at Table A17 in this report (pdf) by the Educational Testing Service. Of children born to white women with a college degree, only 8% were born out of wedlock. But of children born to white women who did not finish college, 28% were born outside of marriage. Of children born to white women who stopped their education after high school, 42.1% were out of wedlock. And of births to white women like Bristol Palin, who have not completed high school, almost 61% were out of wedlock."

According to Frum these rates continue to be on the rise and when you look at Hispanic women or children born to Hispanic women with some college 38.6% are born out of wedlock and 48.6% are born to women who only graduated high school.

He argues that Pat Buchanan thinks these are the core of social conservatives. I've heard the same from a friend who is a state Rep. from a conservative district. He once told me that when he is knocking doors he can tell you by age only, regardless of which party they identify with, whether the voter will be supporting him or not. He said that young voters who never went to college who are at home with children and can't manage to get a leg up, he thinks that they're so angry at their own misfortune that they would rather vote for someone that would make beer illegal than vote for someone like him that is young and stepping up to fill a leadership position.

This is similar to the premise for Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas, which is now on its way to being a feature documentary. Frank argues that the people who are the most in need are easily captured by the "values" of the GOP and will eagerly vote against their own best interest.

His quote from Buchanan is a gem, however.

"there remain many socially conservative voters who are “white, working- and middle-class, Catholic, small-town, rural, unionized, middle-age and seniors, and surviving on less than $50,000 a year.”

Frum emphasizes "middle aged and seniors" from that statement, hoping that younger white downscale voters are a whole different deal.

" It is marriage that creates culturally conservative voters – and young downscale Americans are not getting married. When they do marry, they do not stay married: While divorce rates among the college educated have declined sharply since the 1970s, divorce rates among high school graduates remain ominously high.

The socially conservative downscale voter is increasingly becoming a mirage – and a Republican politics based on that mirage will only lead us deeper into the desert."

Not to gush but, wouldn't that be cool if it turns out to be true??