All-out efforts under way to get young to polls

By J. Patrick Coolican
Seattle Times staff reporter

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At 23, she said she's never voted before and has no political opinions. Her brain is a wax tablet upon which bands like Pearl Jam and Mudhoney hope to inscribe "dump Bush."

She also demonstrates the challenge of getting people to vote when they have zero interest in the outcome of the election.

"I've never been into that kind of stuff," she said while smoking a cigarette outside Northgate Mall in Seattle.

Information No Vote Left Behind music festival started last night and runs through the weekend at various locations. For information on tickets and scheduling, call 800-325-SEAT, or go to www.novoteleftbehind.net/events.php

This year has seen a surge of efforts to get 18-to-29-year-olds like Chang out to vote. Nonpartisan groups such as Rock the Vote, Hip-Hop Action Summit Network and New Voter Project have spent $40 million.

Meanwhile, groups like No Vote Left Behind and America Coming Together organize young voters for the Democrats. Republicans rely on their college Republican network to canvas campuses and dorm rooms, said Aaron Schwitters, chairman of Washington state Students for Bush.

Both sides hope to excite the electorate's most apathetic demographic, one that politicians often ignore even though it represents 40 million people and 21 percent of the voting-age population.

Are get-out-the-vote efforts and events like this weekend's having much success getting young voters registered?

Early polling suggests 2 million more young people may vote this year than in 2000, according to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) at the University of Maryland, the leading authority on young voters.

Estimates of youth turnout vary widely. What's not in dispute is that turnout is declining and well below that of older voters.

Only 46 percent of 18-to-29-year-old eligible voters voted in 2000, down from 58 percent in 1972. That's far below the 72 percent of the rest of the electorate that voted four years ago, according to the Maryland center.

Young people don't vote because politicians pay little attention to their issues, like college costs; conversely, politicians pay little attention to their issues because they don't vote, said Peter Levine, deputy director of the Maryland center.

And too often, when they speak to young voters, politicians can sound like cloying salesmen.

"I saw an MTV interview with [Sen. John Kerry], and he was lame. He couldn't speak to people our age," said Celina Santi, 21, who lives in Seattle.

Professor John Gastil of the University of Washington thinks there's another reason young people don't vote: They have no civic experience.

"Over the course of your life you have lots of experiences that make you think of yourself as more of a citizen. The older you get, the more of these experiences you have," he said.

In other words, once someone pays a property-tax bill or watches a neighbor run for office, he or she starts thinking more about voting.

A Pearl Jam concert may be more fun than paying a property-tax bill, but what effect can it have? Gastil says it's hard to measure because the crowd has chosen to come, so many of the head-bobbers may already be devoted to the cause.

The rockers hope to reach a fairly small group of persuadable voters by attracting them with music, Gastil said. "It's a fine line, because if the band is on stage talking politics, then people there for the music might get annoyed."

There's also a "memory problem," Levine said. Will people remember the message, especially given the, um, intoxicating atmosphere of most rock concerts?

Though the results are hard to measure, "everybody assumes [these events] have some effect, which is why they use them," Levine said.

Nearly 80 percent of 18-to-29-year-old voters say they're paying "a lot" or "some" attention to this election, according to an MTV/CIRCLE poll released this week. Nearly half say they'll vote for the first time this year.

The reasons aren't complicated. In addition to the big push by groups like "No Vote Left Behind," both major parties, coupled in a 50-50 deadlock, are hunting for every vote they can.

Also, events — like the terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq — have focused the country on politics. And politics have become rich fodder for comedy TV, where more than one-fifth of young voters say they regularly get some of their political information, according to a poll taken by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

There's another reason young people may be more engaged this year, even if its purely mythic: Nearly one-third think a draft will "probably be reinstated," according to the MTV/CIRCLE poll. The Bush administration has consistently denied this possibility.

The same polling suggests Sen. John Kerry has a slim lead among younger voters.

In the Maryland center's survey, 46 percent of people in that age group say they will vote for Kerry; 40 percent for Bush.

When they're asked, 18-to-29-year-olds split evenly among "conservative," "liberal" and "moderate," Levine said.

In other words, young voters are fired up about the election, and nearly evenly divided — just like their parents and grandparents.

J. Patrick Coolican: 206-464-3315 or jcoolican@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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