Julia Mccarthy: Focus on concerts, celebrities weakens student voting campaigns

Going to a concert and going to a voting booth are vastly different experiences.

But for some reason, both national and UCLA organizations are linking the two, and using celebrity figures and concerts to motivate students to get to the polls after a stop at the concert.

At UCLA, this process is beginning with the Undergraduate Students Association Council External Vice President’s Office spearheading the “BruinsVote!” campaign to register student voters for the November elections. And while this campaign is largely a positive movement, the focus on using pop culture figures or concerts as motivation to get students to vote can misrepresent the purpose of political engagement and student voting. Voting is about influencing policy, not about celebrities and concerts.

This year, Conrad Contreras, the external vice president, aims to combine voter registration with voter education, which could potentially change the way students see UCLA voter registration campaigns, and improve their effectiveness.

In order for this switch in mindsets to take place, students need to take advantage of the programming efforts the EVP’s office has put into the elections. Students need to actually invest in learning about the candidates and propositions at play this November rather than being involved simply for the benefit of the concert.

Political engagement and entertainment aren’t mutually exclusive. But in order for the two areas to intersect productively, BruinsVote! and the voters themselves need to share a common idea about what the real purpose of the campaign is: getting to the polls, not only to the concert.

While registering students to vote is ultimately a net positive, the UCLA-centric voter registration campaigns and broader organizations like “Rock the Vote” can send out the wrong message about what elections and political engagement are about.

This week, the EVP office is hosting an event every night to educate students about the elections, candidates and propositions on the ballot in November, culminating in the concert on Friday. Because wristbands for the concert are limited, students can get priority wristbands through attending one of the events or volunteering to register students to vote.

But former voter registrations efforts have been a mixed bag in terms of turnout for similar programs and concerts. In 2012, the concert put on to encourage students to vote was poorly attended and the audience was mainly made up of students involved in the voter registration campaigns. Essentially, the reach of the campaign wasn’t incredibly effective.

In 2008, the main student voter registration group “StudentsVOTE!” registered about 8,000 students. This year’s goal is 5,000 Contreras said, but so far BruinsVote! has registered only about 1,200.

This year is particularly important for student turnout because it is a midterm election year, and typically midterm years yield lower voter turnout than presidential election years. Student voter turnout could potentially play a significant role in some of the races this November.

Students can make up a large part of the electorate that decides the next supervisor for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, a position which plays a large role in bringing jobs to Los Angeles. Students can also influence whether or not Proposition 47, which changes smaller crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, reducing jail time for many young people, gets passed.

To keep students committed to following through and going to the voting booths, the campaign can’t end with the concert. Getting students to register to vote and getting them to go to the concert is one thing. But if they don’t actually make it to the polls in November, the campaign fails.

So the responsibility of civic engagement is a two-way street: Students need to be invested in the BruinsVote! campaign and understand the potential weight of their vote when registering, but the campaign itself needs to clarify the importance of voting. This importance could be downplayed by the incentivizing tactics of the campaign in positioning the concert at the end of the week as a reward for registering.

Students shouldn’t be motivated to get involved in politics because Lena Dunham stars in a “Rock the Vote” video telling you to get to the voting booths. And they shouldn’t be motivated to register voters because it might land them a wristband to a concert.

Making it to a concert but not a voting booth will be a failure on behalf of UCLA and the students.