Frisbees, tennis balls and CDs flew through the air into a crowd
of over 200 onlookers as hip-hop icon KRS-One headlined a concert
to encourage voting in this November’s elections.
The rapper, a local band, student groups and the nationwide Rock
the Vote campaign filled the Westwood Plaza air with speech, music
and thundering beats in one of 30 statewide events designed to get
young potential voters to beat Monday’s midnight deadline to
register.
“(Voting) is the students’ voice,” said
Allende Palma-Saracho, chief of staff for event co-sponsor T.J.
Cordero, internal vice president for the Undergraduate Students
Association Council.
“It’s the only means of keeping representatives
accountable to voters,” he continued.
The parties involved in the event had a common purpose of
jumpstarting student interest in voting, a demographic which voted
at a paltry rate of 32 percent in the last presidential election in
2000.
“I’m not a political person; (politics are) a big
mess,” said first-year undeclared student Law Yung.
“It’s too much of a hassle.”
The event also pushed for a ballot item that would remove the
hassle from voting: Proposition 52, which would establish same-day
voter registration in California. Similar policies already exist in
six other states.
Proponents of Proposition 52 say college-age voters ““ who
change their addresses more frequently than any other population
segment ““ will be most affected by its passage and it could
substantially increase turnout among voters ages 18-24.
“Young voters have the been the most mobile segment of the
California population. It’s hard for them to keep their
voting status current,” said Tom Knox, press aide for the Yes
on Prop. 52 campaign.
“Students will vote once they see that the system works
for them,” he added.
Opponents of the proposition, which include district attorneys
and various state sheriffs, say same-day voter registration would
make it easy for criminals and non-citizens to vote without proper
identification.
KRS-One, who was born Lawrence Krisna Parker, took stage at the
tail end of the event and put on a 30-minute set of freestyle
rapping and parts of hit songs that have highlighted his 16-year
career. He also managed to intersperse pro-Proposition 52 and
pro-voting messages into his songs.
But even though he came to UCLA to spread the message of
increasing the youth vote, KRS-One said after the short concert
that he does not vote himself. He explained his non-voting with the
reasoning that there have been no political candidates that he
agrees with on an ideological level.
“I have not found satisfaction in really anyone,” he
said.
“But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be
politically active,” KRS-One added, referring to his
decade-long involvement in drives like Rock the Vote, which he has
supported since its inception during the 1992 presidential
election.
He also lent his support for Proposition 52, which he said has
the potential to dramatically ease the voting process.
“The idea of being able to register and vote at the same
time is groundbreaking,” he said.
Other students and speakers used the event as a forum to protest
a possible war in Iraq and the Racial Privacy Initiative, a 2004
California ballot item that would restrict state-collected racial
and ethnic data.