If history is any indicator, Nov. 2 may see more midterms
crammed for than ballots cast by young people at UCLA and across
the country. The notoriously apathetic under-30 voting bloc has
shown a steady, 30-year decline in poll presence each Election Day,
but many people hope and believe this election will be the death of
that trend. Unprecedented numbers of volunteers and activists
across the country have canvassed college campuses, malls and
community festivals seeking to register the unregistered and have
often succeeded. “I think that young people are really
mobilized this year,” said Holly Teresi, a spokeswoman for
Youth Vote Coalition, a nonpartisan coalition of organizations
hoping to get out the youth vote. “We’re expecting 20
million young voters to come out,” she said, in what would be
a significant increase over the 18 million youth voters in the 2000
presidential election. Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan, nonprofit
group that uses musicians and celebrities to inspire youth
activism, has registered nearly 800,000 people, up from the 500,000
registered for the 2000 election. But the fickle and sometimes
unreliable nature of the youth voter leaves some skeptical of
whether this election really will be different. “I
don’t think it’s going to be an overwhelming
change,” said Lynn Vavreck, a UCLA political science
professor. Convincing young people to vote, she said, with their
history of low voter turnout, it’s “a very hard habit
to change.”
Shifting priorities Often, the reason young
people do not vote is as much an issue of priority as it is one of
apathy. “I just don’t follow … a lot of
politics,” said second-year film student Phil Sagadraca.
“I’m focusing more on career stuff right now.”
Sagadraca said he does not plan on voting in November, but will
likely vote in future elections. “(Young people) are at a
very different place in their lives,” Vavreck said.
“Voting seems less important to them.” She said their
reasons for voting or not voting tend to be
“situational.” The comfortable confines of their
parents’ home or their dorm room can shield many young people
from the issues that drive presidential elections. And when the
issues are not relevant, neither is voting. Presidential campaigns
realize these factors make youth voters a virtual wildcard as
Election Day approaches, but they value the votes nonetheless.
“Voter apathy is more rampant among younger voters so we
certainly want to get the percentage up,” said Yier Shi, a
spokesman for the Republican National Committee. Third-year
psychology student Sally Sheng is among the ranks of young people
who want to vote, but she said she cannot because she is not yet a
U.S. citizen. She said she believes youth voter turnout is low
because young people do not feel like they have power to effect any
social change by voting. “They feel even if they do vote,
there’s not going to be much difference,” Sheng said.
The 2000 presidential election saw only 46 percent of potential
youth voters cast a ballot, while 72 percent of potential voters 30
and over did. But UCLA students may show slightly more interest in
voting than the average youth voter. A recent study by the Center
for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement
showed that young people who have completed some college have a 52
percent voter turnout rate. And once students complete college,
that number jumps all the way up to 68 percent. Two such people,
Sara Fletcher and Michelle Gallagher, not only voted in every
election since they turned 18, but for several hours each week they
plant themselves on Bruin Walk and register other young people to
vote. Fletcher, 30, a post-doctoral student, and Gallagher, 28, a
graduate student in philosophy, have volunteered every Tuesday and
Thursday since mid-August and have registered “maybe
60″ new voters. “I think more (young people) are going
to vote in this election,” Fletcher said, because issues like
a proposed draft and increasing student fees directly impact
potential young voters.
“The most important election”
“The message is out that this is one of the more important
elections of our generation,” Shi said. Apparently, many
people agree. Vice President Dick Cheney, Democratic presidential
candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and a slew of other politicians
have proclaimed in recent speeches that this is “the most
important election in our lifetime.” In one of the most
politically polarized times in recent memory, the difference
between the parties is clear to young voters. A July report by the
Pew Research Center showed nearly two-thirds of the voting
population believes it “really matters who wins the
election,” up from only 45 percent who felt that way in 2000.
But, even if the election is that important, will it really make a
difference to young voters on the first Tuesday in November? Like
Teresi, Jay Strell, a spokesman for Rock the Vote, believes over 20
million youth voters will cast a ballot in this election.
Organizations across the country are trying to register as many new
voters as possible. The County of Los Angeles
Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk had received 10,400 new
registration as of Sept. 13, 50 days before the election, said
Marcia Ventura, a spokeswoman for the registrar’s office.
“In the presidential election of 2000 at 50 days out we had
9,600 new registrations,” she said. But she said the increase
in new registrations over 2000 was typical of the fluctuation seen
when comparing numbers from different elections. While Vavreck
admits “there has been a tremendous effort to register people
to vote,” she does not believe this will directly translate
into a change in the collective attitude of young voters. Just
registering young people does not guarantee they will vote. After
the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1971, youth voter
turnout has persistently declined, excepting only a brief surge in
1992, when Bill Clinton appeared on youth-oriented television, like
MTV and the Arsenio Hall Show in one of the most direct appeals to
the youth vote by a presidential candidate. The high-water mark of
58 percent youth voter turnout in the 1972 election has crept down
to sub-50 percent levels this millennium. But excitement and
anticipation at the prospect of returning to 1970s-like turnout
numbers have stemmed from the increase in interest in politics
among young people. The July report by the Pew Research Center
showed 58 percent of young people say they are more interested in
politics than they were four years ago, up from 45 percent in 2000.
It also showed an 11-point increase over 2000 in the percentage of
young people who say they are certain to vote. “Because (the
2000 election) was so close,” Vavreck said, “there are
many more people who think that their vote counts.” Brian
Richardson, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee,
echoed Vavreck’s assessment. Since Florida was won in 2000 by
only 537 votes, Richardson said, “Young people have realized
that their vote does make a difference.” But increased
interest does not win elections and it remains to be seen whether
young voters will back up these pre-election numbers by showing up
at the polls.
An independent style On Dec. 2, 1964, Mario
Savio gave a vivid and emotional speech to a large crowd of
protesters during a sit-in on the UC Berkeley campus. “There
is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious,
makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part,”
he said. “And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the
gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus
and you’ve got to make it stop.” In the early 1960s,
Savio had sparred with then-UC President Clark Kerr and other UC
officials over the right of students to actively participate in
civil rights and other political groups on campus. The sit-in
resulted in 800 arrests, one of the largest mass arrests in
California history. Savio’s agitation, along with several
other growing movements, served as a model for large-scale protests
and gave birth to widespread civil rights and, later, anti-war
protests on campuses across the country. From the active campus
politics of the 1960s, young people have long been stamped with a
liberal label. Even within the Democratic Party such stereotypes
can persist. “When young voters go to the polls, Democrats
win,” Richardson said. In 2000, the youth vote split
virtually evenly between George W. Bush and Al Gore. A June report
by the Pew Research Center showed youth voters today tend to favor
Kerry over Bush 56 to 41 percent. But while some may still consider
young people to be left of the average person, many experts
disagree. “We’re definitely not seeing a liberal
skew,” Teresi said. “All the research we’ve seen
says that young people are more independent than Democratic or
Republican,” she said. Strell said young people today tend to
be less partisan than past generations. “Young people
increasingly don’t identify with political parties ““
they identify with issues,” he said. Strell said since most
of the U.S. soldiers in Iraq are under 35 and ever-increasing
college fees are making student loans more important, young people
today are more directly affected by many of the issues than they
have been in the past. He also listed job-creation and health care
as key issues for young voters in this election.
Stumping to the youth vote With boundless
uncertainty surrounding the youth vote, candidates have been
historically reluctant to commit significant resources to try to
draw out young people to the polls. “Politicians often
don’t try to contact young people in the way they try to
contact older Americans,” Teresi said, in terms of the
television shows the candidates appear on and when they air their
television ads. But she said the tide may be turning, with the
candidates reaching out to younger audiences ““ like
Kerry’s appearance on Comedy Central’s “The Daily
Show.” “The candidates are trying to make themselves
more accessible to young people,” Teresi said. She said that
candidates get roughly the same return in votes from young people
as they do from older people when committing resources to getting
out the vote. Both Republicans and Democrats are reaching out to
college students with specific programs targeting the potential
activist who can, in turn, influence his or her peers. Shi said the
Republican National Committee has a college Republican program at
“most of the colleges across the country,” each with
the goal of creating new young Republicans who will continue to
vote the party in future elections. The Democrats, at their
national convention, held a College Democrats Convention for 1,400
student activists, Richardson said. And, he said, prominent
Democrats have taken part in their cross-country college tour. This
election has also seen a marked departure for candidates in terms
of their utilization of the Internet. The Internet had never played
a significant role in an election until the Democratic primaries
this year, when former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean assembled a massive
grassroots coalition of youth supporters through internet chat
rooms and Web logs. Dean was able to “revolutionize”
the way a candidate gains and organizes supporters, political
science Professor Vavreck said, by tapping into a rich source of
young, internet-savvy, potential voters. But, as Teresi pointed
out, Dean “wasn’t able to connect the Internet use from
young people to activism. In the future years, we will see more of
a connection.” Despite the dismal track record of youth
voters, candidates are trying to appeal to youth voters because of
their potential influence. A recent study by the Center for
Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement showed
that the 40.7 million eligible voters age 18-29 in this election
will constitute 21 percent of the overall voting population. A
voting bloc this large cannot be overlooked by a candidate, even if
more than half of that bloc will not vote. And with many people
predicting an increase in youth voter turnout, the youth vote has
become even more important to the candidates. “Young voters
are certainly one of the most sought-after (groups) in this
election,” Shi said.
A little star power Fourteen years ago, a group
of musical artists set out to make voting “cool” among
the country’s youth. Enlisting bands, actors, athletes and
comedians, the founders of Rock the Vote helped increase youth
voter turnout in 1992 by almost 10 percentage points over the
previous presidential election to 54 percent. But then it lost
steam. Youth voter turnout fell 10 percentage points in 1996 and
stayed about the same in 2000. Their reasons for not voting varied,
but Rock the Vote suffered criticism for being ineffective. Those
numbers are poised to dramatically rebound as an unprecedented
surge in celebrity attention to the issue of youth voting has
reinvigorated the call to the polls. Sagadraca, the second-year
film student who does not plan on voting, said of all the efforts
to get him to vote, the celebrity-laden organizations ““ like
Rock the Vote ““ have begun to sway his opinion on the issue.
“That’s starting to convince me to vote,” he
said. Rock the Vote, which is nonpartisan, has also taken some
criticism for the political views of its associated artists. Some
of the “artists who have rocked the vote” include bands
with well-publicized anti-Bush views, including the Dixie Chicks
and Radiohead. But Strell is quick to point out that Rock the Vote
advocates protection of individual freedoms, including speech, so
it will not reject artists based on their views. Additionally, he
said Rock the Vote is associated with artists like Toby Keith and
Kid Rock, who have made comments in the past in support of Bush.
Vavreck said while the group does not advocate a specific political
viewpoint, many of the social issues Rock the Vote deals with tend
to appeal to slightly more Democratic youth voters. For this
reason, she said, if the group mobilizes a large number of youth
voters, “it could be good news for John Kerry.” While
some celebrities try to keep partisan banter to a minimum, others,
like filmmaker Michael Moore, wear their political views on their
sleeves. Moore, sharply criticized for the perceived one-sidedness
of his highly successful and highly controversial film
“Fahrenheit 9/11,” hopes to sway as many voters as he
can in this election. Many question whether the film will have an
influence on the voting population, but the impressionable nature
of youth voters leaves some open to the possibility. “I think
there’s potential there for movies to influence young
voters,” Teresi said. “It remains to be seen what
influence (Fahrenheit 9/11) will have.”
With reports from Hoorig Santikian, Bruin
contributor.