Young election workers enlist support from people their own age

by Mariel Clark

“You see them everywhere. There’s another one,” says Juan Padron a 28-year-old public school teacher. 

He’s not talking about the latest fashion trend or cockroaches or gas-guzzling cars.  He’s talking about young election workers – 18 to 29 year olds who carry clipboards or sit behind tables as they register voters and raise money.  Padron would know, because he’s one of them – the countless number of young people who use their free time, nights and weekends to campaign for the candidate of their choice. 

Padron says this year he and several other groups have made a concerted effort to register 18 to 29 year olds.  Studies show young people, like Padron, will have more success engaging their peers.  One study, conducted by Yale University’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies showed young people were 18 percent more likely to vote after face-to-face contact by someone their own age. Some campaigns know this and are making an effort to court youth support. They say if they’ve done their job right the age group won’t disappoint when it comes to voting.

“The youth movement? On Election Day you’ll see it. Lines will be stretching around the corner. College students will be skipping class to vote. The youth movement is a tsunami,” Padron says.

Campaign collegues of Padron say he’s their “go to guy” when it comes to capturing young voters.  “He’s great,” says Linda Drigant, a campaign volunteer. “He really knows how to talk to [young people].”

“I’m just direct with them,” Padron says. “I say, ‘Are you ready for Nov. 4? Are you ready to vote?’”  Padron says he finds it easer for both people when talking to someone his age but just talking isn’t enough.  Padron tries to connect with young people on issues important to them. “Young voters are concerned with the same things as everyone else but from a different angle,” Padron says.  “Older people are worried about their retirements. Younger people are worried about even getting savings started.”  Padron says once he engages his peers in the discussion they often register to vote. “I have a pretty good track record [getting them to register],” he says. “If they’ll vote or not? (shrugs).”

Other groups say getting young people to vote means getting them interested and engaged.  For Anthony Reinhart, president of the Richmond County Young Republicans (RCYR) on Staten Island, it’s about face-to-face contact.

“It’s a very grassroots approach to the campaign,” he says. “We get in front of people.” The group recently rented a bus with a PA system, covered it with campaign signs and drove around the city stopping along the way to register voters – especially young ones.

Reinhart says they adapted their pitches for the younger voters by being chattier and using more casual language. “And it helps that we’re in the same age group,” says the 24-year-old.

Reinhart’s group and their presidential candidate John McCain are underdogs in New York but Reinhart sees this as a challenge. 

“Because Obama is expected to win makes it that much more exciting,” he says. “It’s one of those battles where we have to fight that much harder.  [Barack Obama] appeals so much to youth and younger people.  But it’s important to remember the other side: young people do identify with John McCain.” 

Reinhart points to a sister group to his organization, the Manhattan Young Republicans, who just enrolled member number 700. “All of them are young people, young republicans, who want to be engaged,” Reinhart says.

Ryan McVeigh, a campaign worker for Barack Obama, is doing his best to engage anyone.  McVeigh, 24, is new to his volunteer job of collecting donations for Obama’s campaign. It’s his third day walking the streets with a clipboard and so far he hasn’t had much luck. “Excuse me sir. Do you have a minute for Barack Obama?” he asks a middle-aged man pushing a stroller.  The man passes without even glancing in McVeigh’s direction.  But a few minutes later McVeigh manages to hand his clipboard to a young woman who fills out her name, contact information and credit card number.

For young voters or donors it may feel less intimidating, more relaxed to talk to a worker their own age.  Lauren Martin, 20, says she registered to vote after a “young guy” approached her on the street.  She says she had already passed up registration tables staffed with older people but responded to him.  “With an old person it’s like ‘am I in trouble?’ but when they’re my age it’s just easier to talk to them,” Martin says. 

It’s unclear if the efforts of young campaign workers will raise turnout of young voters.  Historically younger voters haven’t voted in large numbers when compared to other age brackets.  But Reinhart says there’s a huge potential for his age group to make a difference in this year’s election.  “To a certain extent the age group is taken for granted – until we get to shine.”

First vote of first generation takes on bigger meaning

By Gaia Pianigiani

 

As young men amble by, bouncing to the rhythms of hip-hop, a woman in an embroidered African dress bends down to register to vote at a table along Utica Avenue in Crown Heights and smiles to the girl on the other side.

Damali Christopher smiles back. Her own mother was almost Christopher’s age – 20 — when she came to Brooklyn a quarter-century ago from Trinidad. Now she is a construction worker who has raised four daughters and pays taxes – but cannot vote for president.

“She can go to jail like an American, but she can’t vote,” says Christopher. “I am going to be the first one to vote.”

The community districts that include Crown Heights are three-quarters African-American; most of the older residents are legal immigrants who nonetheless can’t vote. But their children who were born here can. They represent a challenge for Christopher, one of the 30 young people who joined the “The Fifteen Hours Project,” a non-partisan voter registration campaign organized by Medgar Evers College and sponsored by local politicians, businesses and cultural associations.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, a non-profit think tank that studies the movement of people worldwide, only half of the nearly 2 million eligible black citizens in New York State voted in 2004, compared to 60 percent of state residents of all races.

“We are running into something dangerous: young people don’t believe that people died to give us the right to vote,” says Miles McAfee, the advisory board coordinator at the Medgar Evers School of Professional and Community Development. “We need to educate them.”

Armed with registration forms, guidelines to identify eligible citizens and a huge smile, Christopher, who studies mathematics at Medgar Evers, spent the day recently on the streets of Crown Heights to register voters. Her goal for the day was to register Hispanic and black men, the segment of the population that she believes are the most reluctant.

As the day begins, Christopher wants to register two friends of hers who live in Bedford Stuyvesant, and then talk to strangers on the street. She knows that many of them can’t vote, including two brothers on parole who went to jail together and a Dominican woman who has a green card but lacks American citizenship.

A few young women on Fulton Street tell her that they don’t want to vote. A shop-keeper explains that she has never voted and will never vote because has no faith that politics is going to make her rich. A young man with a shiny square earring seems interested in what she has to say, but ends up asking for her phone number.

Christopher finally manages to register her friend, Elisabeth Gonzales.

“Your vote does count,” Gonzales says from behind the counter at Pollo Pizza Restaurant on Pitkin Avenue. “I’d have registered anyway, but had no time so far, even if at times you get so disgusted with the economy.”

Enthusiasm mingles with disaffection among the young adults in Central Brooklyn. And Christopher understands some people’s lack of faith.

“‘The Fifteen Hours Project’ was my calling,” she says. “At Medgar Evers, they taught me that we change brains when we are united.”

Named after the movie “The Last 15 Hours,” about the final heated hours of Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries’ victorious campaign in 2006, the project was designed to translate art into political action. Its main focus was to spur young people to give themselves representation in their own government, McAfee says.

The campaign registered more than 2,500 voters, according to the organizers.

“Maybe the one person that I am going to register is going to make the difference,” says Christopher.

By the end of the day, she had registered 22 voters. Of them, 19 were strangers and largely women her age. But they also included an 80-year-old woman who had never before voted and a 24-year-old Orthodox Jewish man. Three others were young men from her neighborhood, guys she called “corna boys,” who stand on street corners and do whatever job comes their way.

These young men, she says, are especially hard to convince because they believe that no president will change the way they have to make money, or give them a high-school diploma.

“I tell them to look at the larger picture,” she says. “All together we hold the power to change everything.”

Christopher says that Barack Obama embodies her hope for change, the family man whom she wants to lead her country. He addresses issues such as health insurance and the war in Iraq in a more effective way than John McCain, she believes.

“I don’t like him because he is black — I believe in what he is saying,” she says.

Her family is too rich to be classified as below the poverty line and too poor to afford a family health plan. Even if her mother is West Indian and always knows a trick, an herbal remedy is not always enough, she says.

Christopher says she also worries about the massacre of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. “Yes, I am for my country, but not for the war,” she says. She feels that as a citizen, she has the duty to vote and voting should be mandatory.

However, for Christopher there is more significance to this election because it’s her first.

“My family has no say so,” she says, “so I’m doing it for them, too.”

Organizations Reach Out to Youth as Bridge to Immigrant Communities

By Paul Stephens

At age 16, Jenny Dai is too young to vote, but she’s been canvassing in Flushing all the same, realizing she has a powerful tool to reach out to potential voters: her ability to speak Mandarin Chinese.

Of an estimated 6.6 million Asian-Americans who are eligible to vote in the United States, only about half were registered in 2006 and only one third voted. Going door to door through the apartment buildings in Flushing, Dai and her canvassing teammates, June Li and Angela Lee, were on a mission to increase those numbers, one voter at a time.

Many immigrant communities separated from the electoral process by their limited English have low voter participation rates, but here in New York, civic groups and political campaigns are turning to the children of immigrants as bridges to those new to the political process. Organizers have concluded it’s a cost-effective way to reach large populations of potential voters, because immigrant youth are more likely to be bilingual than their parents, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement Foundation.

As in the rest of the U.S., immigrants in New York must first be naturalized before they can register to vote, but even some naturalized citizens are left out of the electoral process due to language barriers. Standard campaign efforts, such as advertisements, phone calls, and rallies, don’t necessarily reach those who don’t speak English.

For that reason, the YKASEC – Empowering the Korean American Community, the organization leading the canvassing effort in Flushing, has made an effort to reach out young Asian-Americans for its get-out-thevote efforts, said Chris Chung, 26, a program coordinator. Even though older people are more likely to be politically engaged, he said, “young people can be points of contact for the parents, and they can serve as mouthpieces and ears for the first generation.”

Young people are also more likely to volunteer time, Chung said. This year, for the first time, the organization will be canvassing neighborhoods as a part of their campaign to reach 1,000 Asian-American voters in Flushing to encourage them to cast ballots in November. The canvass is a part of a larger campaign run by Voice Your Vote New York, a coalition of Asian-American organizations encouraging civic engagement. Studies have shown that members of ethnic minorities and immigrant communities are more likely to vote when approached by canvassers who are similar to them.

“The language barrier is really tough,” said Li, a recent college graduate. She was doing her best to engage potential voters, sometimes politely shouting through the door in Mandarin to convince residents to open up. “They are already like, who are you? Why are you here?” she said, so letting them know immediately that the canvassers spoke Mandarin was important.

Li, who moved with her parents to the U.S. from China when she was 6, had written out her talking script in Pinyin, a transliteration of Chinese, because she’s more fluent in English than Chinese. Sometimes Dai, her Mandarin-speaking teammate, would step in, because she was more comfortable with the language.

“They don’t want to talk, because they don’t speak English,” Dai said, “but there is a sense of familiarity when we speak their language.” She thought that the reticence to talk that many canvassers experience in immigrant communities shouldn’t be seen as a sign of political apathy, but an assumption that the door knockers won’t be able to speak Chinese.

Dai comes from a politically active family, and even though she won’t be able to vote in a presidential election until 2012, she felt compelled to be a part of this one because it is, “I don’t want to say historical, but kind of radical.”

The Chinese community in Flushing speaks many Chinese languages, including Mandarin and Cantonese, but even non-Mandarin speakers seemed to appreciate the effort the volunteers demonstrated. One woman, a Cantonese speaker from Hong-Kong, who also spoke Mandarin, marveled that the team had shown up at her door to encourage her to go to the polls. She said she planned to vote, which buoyed the team.

The New York State Youth Leadership Council, another immigrant advocacy organization, trains young immigrants on voter issues, the political process and organizing, skills that they can then take back to their communities, said Kiran Savage-Sangwan, director of the council’s civic engagement program. Young people involved in the program also go on voter registration drives.The council targets young people who moved to the U.S. as children but are now high school or college age, a generation they see as key to energizing the immigrant community.

Organizers say that the concerns of young immigrants overlap with those of the community at large and include immigration reform, education and financial aid, and employment opportunities.

The potential voters that the young canvassers spoke to in Flushing gave a variety of responses to the question of what issue was most important to them, ranging from the economy to health care to moral values. Some issues, it seems, translate in any language.

Brooklyn’s Overlooked Young Republican

By Richard Solash

Posters in the windows of Bed-Stuy, t-shirts by the rack in Fort Greene, and a neighborhood supporters group called “The Audacity of Park Slope.”

In the months leading up to the presidential election, much of Brooklyn has demonstrably become Barack Obama country, particularly among the borough’s young voters.

But what about Sam Rivera? The 21-year-old Cardozo law student lives in Williamsburg’s “Northside,” an area increasingly known for its artsy, and decidedly liberal, hipster population. Sam, however, is no supporter of the Illinois Democrat. He is the vice president of the Brooklyn Young Republican Club. In a land of free political thought, that’s just fine, but in his neighborhood and in his age group, it certainly isn’t expected. Being a young Republican in today’s Brooklyn often means fighting an uphill battle – against assumption and for acceptance.

“Whenever I tell people that I’m a Republican and then where I live, they say ‘I didn’t know there were any of you guys there!’” says Rivera, who was born and raised in his neighborhood.

The Board of Elections’ most recent registration tally says that his assembly district in Williamsburg is home to over 6,000 GOP voters, but nearly 45,000 Democrats. Numbers by age group are not available, but with national polls indicating that most young voters are for Obama, the assumption in Rivera’s neighborhood is clear: “Some people take it for granted that I am for Obama because of my age,” he says. “But I would hope that no one would expect people to be a certain way based on generalizations.”

Rivera is used to the generalizations. In college, he recalls coming up against them time and again in interactions with fellow students: “They’d make Bush comments or say to me ‘Are you going to the Dems event?’ I’d say ‘I’ll consider it’ – not ‘Democrats be damned’ – but call it what you want, I call it profiling, and I’ve come to expect it.” Ageism, he says, does not only affect older people.

Rivera, who traces his roots to Guatemala, has also encountered race-based judgments: “People don’t just think I’m a Democrat – they hear my last name and think I’m for Hillary!” A Pew Center analysis of Hispanic voting patterns in this year’s democratic primary showed a 2-1 preference for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama.

Today’s political climate, Rivera says, makes it impossible to break through the assumptions. “I’d be lying if I were to tell you that I went out into local coffee shops and entered into political discourse. Politics have become so polarized now, no one wants to talk, no one wants to debate, they just want to hold their own.” Rivera, who calls himself a moderate and insists that he is “about ideas,” says he is willing to show that coffee-shop openness, but doubts about its effectiveness keep him from doing so. One of the reasons he prefers McCain to Obama is for what he perceives to be the Republican candidate’s willingness to reach across the aisle.

Rivera grew up in a household of Democrats, but began to question his family’s stance in the last years of high school, he says. He started thinking in a “national sense” after the 9/11 attacks, he said, and declared himself a Republican. Obama, he says, does not yet have the necessary experience, or a firm enough stance on defense issues, to lead the country.

Rivera wears no McCain pin and sports no McCain cap – “I’m not going to go out and put myself in the line of fire,” he explains – but that doesn’t stop the vice president of the Brooklyn Young Republican Club from campaigning. His group, founded in 1881, but only reestablished in 2004 after a hiatus, has well under 100 paying members. However, it boasts 40 new registrants since June – mainly from neighborhoods with larger conservative constituencies, such as Bay Ridge, Mill Basin and Greenpoint. Together, they rally behind party candidates and work toward “the republican revival of Brooklyn.” That includes trying to locate and recruit some of the other GOP members in Williamsburg who have been hard to come by.

Dues are $15 a year for full-time students and $25 a year for non-students between 18 and 40 years of age. Polling by Rock the Vote, the organization whose goal is to mobilize young voters, only includes voters up to 29, but in an effort to grow the organization, that age limit has been extended by more than a decade.

Members from the borough’s liberal strongholds are rare, even Rivera admits. “When a person at a meet-the-candidate event says they’re from my neighborhood, it’s a shock to me,” he says. “I guess I fall into assuming sometimes as well.”

Rivera admits to occasionally feeling out of place as a young Republican in the Northside, but the thought of moving from his neighborhood hasn’t crossed his mind, he says. Differences of political opinion are not cause for such drastic measures. “People in my neighborhood do what they believe will bring about their goals,” says Rivera. “I respect that, and I’m doing that, too.”

Far From the Ivory Tower

By Brent Lang

Allison Lacko, 20, exhaled deeply, checked the address of a bedraggled row house with the one on her sheet, and knocked on the front door.

No answer. She rapped again – more forcefully. Something rustled inside and a chain lock jerked free from its runner. A man peered out and scowled as he glanced at Lacko and her clipboard.

Undeterred, Lacko launched into her trademark opener: “Hi, I’m Allison. I’m a volunteer for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign checking to make sure everyone here is registered to vote on Nov. 4th. Are you registered?”

Over the next seven hours, Lacko worked to get past the same resistance as she knocked on more than 100 doors in south Philadelphia, an overwhelmingly African-American section of the city where crime and drugs are endemic and 30% of the people live below the poverty line. Lacko is a foot soldier in an army of thousands of predominantly white, college-age kids descending on Pennsylvania in a last-ditch effort to register voters and swing the state to the left.  Deployed every weekend by the Obama campaign, the College Democrats of America, and regional chapters of Students for Obama, this massive get-out-the-vote effort has led many experts and historians to compare Obama’s ability to electrify young Americans with that of President John F. Kennedy, who inspired a rising generation of voters with his 1960 run for the White House.

Since Obama announced his candidacy nearly two years ago, Lacko — who had never worked in politics before — has become a seasoned campaign veteran, traveling to Ohio to help with voter drives and going door-to-door in Brooklyn and Manhattan on behalf of the Democratic National Committee. She’s developed a system for fighting off the mixture of fear, fatigue and disappointment brought on by hours of canvassing. Her prescription: a fixed smile, a military adherence to the campaign’s script and a playlist of power ballads by Queen and Van Halen.

“I always keep in mind what I’m fighting for,” said Lacko on a recent Saturday, as she slogged door to door. “I don’t think I could do it otherwise.”

On that day, Lacko and seven fellow Columbia students parachuted into Philadelphia at the behest of the college’s chapter of Students for Obama to sign up new voters before the registration deadline the following Monday. Though varied in their beliefs, socio-economic backgrounds and political experience, what unified the students was a deep concern about the direction of the country.

It is a concern that has been tapped effectively by Obama’s campaign, which has seen its 78 Pennsylvania field offices swell with college volunteers in recent weeks. These students make phone banks calls, distribute literature, arrange rides to the polls, and, like Lacko’s group, press those in heavily African-American and other traditionally Democratic neighborhoods to register to vote.

With Republicans experiencing a net loss of 28,000 registered voters in Pennsylvania over the past year, Obama’s get-out-the-vote effort has bolstered the ranks of registered Democrats in the state by more than 500,000 since last November. Yet Pennsylvania, with its enclaves of blue-collar workers, proved problematic for Obama in its April primary, going to Sen. Hillary Clinton by a margin of 9 percentage points. And despite having landed in Sen. John Kerry’s column in the 2004 presidential election, Pennsylvania remains a battleground state. Campaign analysts contend that Obama’s ability to win this state and its 21 electoral votes hinges on maximizing voter turnout in urban areas where Democratic support is strongest.

And so, under handmade signs that read “Respect,” “Empower,” and “Include,” college students from out of state furiously assembled voter identification packets at Obama’s south Philadelphia campaign headquarters. Others sent out bands of canvassers in staggered shifts to register as many voters as possible. The bulk of the volunteers were under 30 years old and for many, it was their first foray into politics.

This youth infusion isn’t unique to Pennsylvania. Voters aged 18-29 are avidly following the race and are twice as enthusiastic about Obama as McCain, according to Rock the Vote, a non-profit organization that engages younger voters in the electoral process. The group’s’ poll of 500 young people in September found that more than 10% are translating their enthusiasm into volunteer work – activity that’s apparent across the nation, said spokeswoman Stephanie Young.

Residents of south Philadelphia didn’t always echo the students’ passion for the campaign. Many people opened their front door only halfway, responded curtly through cracked windows, or shouted that they weren’t interested. Even those who did support Obama were irritable when pressed about their registration status or their willingness to volunteer.

But others responded enthusiastically, singing out encouragement and thanking volunteers for their hard work. Some expressed dismay that more young African Americans people were not involved. “I seen five white people walking around and no blacks,” Kyle Well, a south Philadelphia resident, said to Aditya Mukerjee, 19, as he canvassed. “Kids here should be helping. How are they gonna get change?’

Dario Abramskiehn, 20, who coordinated the trip and has been on past voter drives, winced at the disconnect between the comparatively privileged lives of the Columbia canvassers and the hardscrabble existence of the people they were pressing to vote for Obama.

“It can be hard,” said Abramskiehn. “You have to be sure not to exhibit privilege or condescension. You just accept that you look like an outsider.”

As the canvassers trudged from one door to another, they found a neighborhood pockmarked with abandoned homes, victims of the foreclosure crisis, making it nearly impossible to find current addresses for likely supporters. Even in homes that were occupied, it was often difficult to engage residents long enough to confirm that their names matched those on the Obama campaign’s lists. Others were unsure about whether all eligible voters in the household were registered, and still others slammed the door before providing up-to-date phone numbers.

Yet these difficulties did little to cool the ardor of the members of the Columbia expedition. By 10:30, as the waited for the bus that would ferry them back to New York, many exuberantly vowed to travel to Virginia and Ohio in the days before the election.

Whether they would spend election night south of the Mason-Dixon or west of the Alleghenies, all agreed that this time their generation would make a difference.

Finding Love on the Campaign Trail

By Laura Nahmias

The roof deck of a Lower East Side apartment is swarming with young men and women, alternately eyeing each other and the rowdy line for the kegs. But this is no frat party; this is a Barack Obama fundraiser.

More than 200 Obama related events are slated for the three weeks before Election Day in New York City alone, according to BarackObama.com, the campaign’s official website, and many of them have an electricity that’s not just political. To a large degree, these events have been planned by the under-30 set that forms a substantial bloc of Barack’s most passionate followers. And while the events are nominally devoted to Obama, the combination of youth, fervor (political and otherwise) and alcohol often breeds a passion that isn’t just directed at Barack Obama.

Is Barack the new aphrodisiac?

There are more Obama events scheduled these last few weeks in New York City than there are concert listings and scheduled book readings for the same time frame in The New Yorker, a staple read of the same demographic in this city. If you’re out looking for a place to meet people, chances are, there’s a Barack Obama party near you. The events have names like Beers for Barack or Barack Rocks and their mandatory donations are usually in the small amounts that Obama’s younger supporters can afford.

Nick Earhart, 23, attended such an event six weeks ago. “I went to the fundraiser because it seemed like a good deal,” said Earhart, who describes himself as “politically apathetic” and has never even voted. “It cost $20, local breweries and wine distributors provided booze, there was a DJ, and we all got together and had a pretty good time.” The bonus? He met a woman there whom he is now dating.

Since when did political parties start to look like real parties? Older voters might remember similar boisterousness surrounding Jack Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy but the Obama campaign has a new weapon in its arsenal to transform exuberance into action: the internet. Both Barack’s official site and his membership organization mimic the Facebook.com, a hugely popular social networking site where members exchange information with one another and plan events. The similarities between the two sites are blurring the lines between being social and being political for a new generation.

No wonder. One of Facebook’s founders, 25-year-old Chris Hughes, left that company and signed on to develop Obama’s social networking organization at MyBarackObama.com. The site’s template is similar to Facebook’s, making it easy for Obama supporters who are web-savvy to devise, post, and publicize events from their computers.

At MyBarackObama.com, users can upload profiles and photos of themselves, and look at the profiles of people signed up to attend events in their neighborhood. Users can check out the “hotness” of event attendees in advance, which for some supporters is an added incentive to show up. Whether this is an intentional strategy of the Obama campaign is unclear. The website team could not be reached for comment.

Anna Shechtman, an 18-year-old freshman at Swarthmore and New York City native said she got involved with the Obama campaign through his website. Almost immediately after creating a profile on the campaign’s main website, Obama organizers enlisted her to go to New Hampshire for the primary last winter. There she made a connection that was more Danielle Steele than Jim Lehrer.

Anna went door to door with a small group of strangers, and ended up falling for one college kid in particular. The two one upped each other on Obama knowledge, and bonded through the day as they were rebuffed by some residents and welcomed by others.

“The hardships definitely facilitated flirting,” In the weeks after, “we continued our relationship based on very specific events in the primaries, like when we smoked cigars together when Hillary dropped out of the race.”

The relationship has since ended, says Shechtman, though it’s not Obama’s fault. In fact, the Obama campaign turned out to be the only thing the two had in common.

It’s no wonder that politically passionate romances fall closely along party lines, said Regina Barreca, a professor of English and Feminist Studies at the University of Connecticut, noting that one’s political affiliation often says a great deal about ones values, beliefs and emotional sensibilities.

She gave the example of her graduate student, who has said she could never date a Republican. “She said it in the same tone of voice that she might have used to say, ‘I could never date someone who never brushes his teeth,’ or ‘I could never date someone who kicks puppies,’ ” Barreca said.

Young people dedicated to Obama’s politics are likely to view his fundraisers as plausibly productive singles events because most people they meet there share a baseline set of Democratic values.

However, campaign-bred romance is not an Obama-specific phenomenon, said Barreca:

“The hothouse atmosphere of a campaign where ideas, emotions, hopes, and strategies are all compressed by the idea of a deadline — I don’t think it surprises anybody to find that passionate discussions lead to other kinds of passionate expression.”

What is new is the unprecedented number of young people participating in this year’s campaign, and the level of their enthusiasm: Youth voter turnout in this year’s primaries doubled that of four years ago, indicating the largest youth involvement in an election in recent history, according to a recent Rock The Vote poll.

In January of 2008, Playboy Magazine conducted a Politics of Sex poll of 900 registered voters and concluded “more people under 40 have sex at least once a week than vote for president once every four years.”

This November, that statistic just might change, as more young New Yorkers discover that they can accomplish the former simply by demonstrating their intention to do the latter.

Barack-’n-Roll: Pro-Obama Musicians Reach out to Youth in Unprecedented Ways

By Zahra Hankir

Sign up for Music for Democracy and you might get a call on Election Day from Barbara Streisand or Chingy, telling you why Barack Obama should be the next president of the United States.

That is just one of many unusual efforts linking musicians and the web in unprecedented ways to influence the youth vote. Unlike past presidential races, musicians and their followers are now engaging in the political process, mostly to promote Barack Obama. This goes beyond mere endorsements, like those of high-profile stars like Alicia Keys, Justin Timberlake and Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs, and it goes beyond music-related organizing by the Obama campaign itself.

Indeed, most of the impetus has come from artists themselves. Scores of musicians have held Obama fundraising concerts in New York City, from big name, big-ticket Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, to $15-a-head concerts at tiny venues in the outer boroughs. And all of them have used the Internet to fuse together their music and Obama’s politics.

“The sense of urgency, and on the flip side, opportunity, is even greater now for musicians and audiences hoping to see a change that goes beyond style,” said Mark Pedelty, a professor at the University of Minnesota who has studied the relationship between music and politics. “Some of Obama’s strongest supporters also have a strong interest in popular music, and have that youthful belief that the music means something bigger than themselves.”

Among those pushing this message is a small group of young activists in New York who created an online initiative they call Music for Democracy, which aims to bridge the gap between politicians, musicians and youth. “Music for Democracy gives musicians the tools and the pedestal to say that we need to vote for Obama, that we want change,” said 23-year-old Bear Kittay, a musician and founder of the effort.

Thirty-four-year-old jazz pianist Aaron Goldberg is one of the artists who wants that change. He produced and performed in “Jazz for Obama,” a concert in Manhattan in early October, raising $60,500 for the campaign. “Pretty much everywhere we would tour, we were looked at as representatives of America, and it’s pretty clear to me that George Bush doesn’t represent me or America,” said Goldberg. “I felt that I had to do something… to create a sense of unity and activism behind a man and a party to give us hope.”

Adrienne Landry, a 28-year-old New Yorker, organized “Disc-O-bama,” a fundraising disco event in Kansas, a swing state, in September. It was, she said, a “way for young adults to get their groove on while becoming more politically involved by registering to vote and financially contribute to the Obama campaign.” The event raised $1,100 and registered 30 new voters.

The Obama campaign itself is also using music to reach potential supporters. His Facebook page lists his favorite artists (Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Bach and The Fugees), and he’s also worked in numerous references to pop music in interviews, even telling the press that his top iPod picks include Jay-Z and Beyonce songs. The campaign has an official soundtrack featuring hot, young artists like Kanye West and John Mayer. And the official Obama website has links to 60 music groups such as “New York Musicians for Obama” and “Classical musicians for Obama.”

At the same time, Obama has distanced himself from some of the music that swirls around him, publicly criticizing the glorification of materialism, casual sex and bling in rap lyrics. When he accepted his nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, his campaign played a country anthem, “Only in America” in the background.

Of course, John McCain has his music backers too, such as country singers Gretchen Wilson and John Rich. But artists have tended to sing most loudly for Obama, said Pedelty, adding, “Pop, rock and hip hop videos look a lot more like an Obama rally than a McCain-Palin event.” The entertainment and music industry donated $24 million to the Democrats in 2008, but only $8 million to Republicans, according to opensecrets.org.

The connection between pop culture, music and politics is propelled by a technological leap, with blogs, social networks and YouTube all being tapped by artists wanting to participate in the political process. Examples abound: The popular “Yes We Can” and “We are the ones” music videos launched on YouTube by artist will.i.am feature a number of pop, hip hop stars and even actors.

Music for Democracy has organized concerts in swing states, such as “Rock for Barack” in New Mexico, and encourages even little known artists to use a widget on their own websites to send their small cadre of fans to the Music for Democracy site. On Election Day, Music for Democracy will also send voice mails – both pre-recorded messages and live phone calls from musicians – to people registered on the site, reminding them to vote for Obama.

The group’s members hope this year’s efforts foreshadow an even bigger presence in the 2010 congressional race. “By that time, we hope to be well entrenched so that politicians will be thinking they really need to plan for the youth vote with the help of music,” said Executive Director Mitch Manzella. “Music is our church. The days of the fat guy smoking a cigar who is the head of the Democratic Party in each state are gone,” Kittay said. “We’re talking about a Facebook society and in this society, we win.”

Who R U Vting 4?

By Sarah Breger

Last Wednesday, Jonathan Wachter received a text message reminding him to watch the presidential debate.

It wasn’t from a friend or relative but from Barack Obama himself.

Wachter is one of millions of people who have signed up to receive text messages from the Obama campaign, a sign of the 21^st century twist on yard signs and bumper stickers. Supporters today use text messages, iPhone applications and Facebook pages as a means to show support for their favorite candidates.

More than any other recent campaign, Barack Obama’s organizers have embraced the technology that has so engrossed and transformed America’s youth. His campaign is exploiting its odd blend of novelty, instant intimacy and vast reach, in order to mobilize the youth vote on Nov. 4.

“Mobile phones in general are changing the way candidates interact with voters and the way the public interacts with candidates and elected officials,” said Katrin Verclas, a mobile technology expert and the co-founder and coordinator of www.mobileactive.org. “The Obama campaign has most impressively figured that out and has a solid mobile program that is integrated in their overall campaign.”

Obama’s organizers recently introduced an iPhone application that can turn a “Joe-six-pack” into a grassroots campaigner. The main feature of the application is the “Call Your Friends” tool that prioritizes the phone’s contact list by battleground states, encouraging the phone owner to call friends in those states to remind them to vote — presumably for Obama.

A day after the application was released, 1,063 people had used it to make 21,460 calls, according the application’s home page. While there is no way to trace the effect of these calls, the very existence of the tool has reinforced Obama’s image as hip and current.

John McCain’s campaign has not created a text messaging option for supporters.

But voters between the ages of 18-29 are more likely to vote if they are reminded via text message to do so, according to a study of 4,000 voters during the 2006 election. The study, conducted Princeton University and the University of Michigan, found those who received a reminder text were 4 percent more likely to vote than those who did not. And though the percent is small, both nominees are fighting hard for every extra vote.

“Text messaging is a great way to reach young, mobile populations, to reach people who aren’t at their doors, aren’t available via landline phone and don’t really read their mail,” said Aaron Strauss, co-author of the study, in a phone interview.

The Obama campaign has aggressively courted voters to sign up to receive text messages. At rallies and at the Obama website, they are encouraged to send the message GO to OBAMA (62262) to receive updates.

Obama generated a huge buzz when he announced he would first publicize his pick for vice president via text message. Over 2.9 million people received the VP text, according to a report by the mobile division of the Neilson company.

While some may dismiss Obama’s actions as gimmicks, they allow the campaign to collect a huge database of potential voters’ phone numbers who can be prodded to vote come election day.

And for those Luddites in the electorate, there is still hope. Obama just bought a 30-minute ad during prime time television for Oct. 29.

With the Help of Online Resources, Out-of-State Students Try to Navigate the Absentee Ballot Process

By Evelyn Hsieh

Joshua Fu was anxious. After sending a paper form and an online form to request an absentee ballot from California, he still wasn’t sure whether he would receive one in time to participate in this year’s historic presidential election.

“They didn’t send a confirmation or anything after I submitted online,” said Fu, 20, a junior at New York University. “I thought, ‘What happens if it didn’t go through? What happens if the two times I did it cancel out?’”

Students such as Fu encounter a variety of rules, deadlines and procedures for absentee voting, leaving many to wonder why the process is not easier.

Though they are part of a technologically savvy generation, students often must navigate pen-and-paper processes to register to vote.

While students can vote in their adopted state or from their home state, the latter option requires filling out a form to request an absentee ballot, sending it by mail, receiving the ballot, and sending it before a deadline that varies by state. In some states, voters can fill out an online form to request a ballot or do the traditional print and mail method.

“It’s kind of a pain in the butt,” said Lauren Vu, 21, who mailed in an absentee ballot to California. “You fill it out online, print it out, and then send it in. Then they send something back to me. Then I send it to them. It’s a back-and-forth process. But it’s not something I can control.”

In New York, absentee ballot applications can be obtained from county election boards or downloaded online from state or county election web sites. The prospective voter has to mail the application for receipt in the county office seven days before the election or deliver by hand the day before Election Day. To be counted, an absentee ballot must be postmarked by the day before Election Day and must reach the Board of Elections no more than seven days after the election.

While each state and county registrar offers information on their respective web sites, non-governmental resources have also sprouted to help students with absentee voting.

One of the research centers at New York University’s law school offers an online guide with detailed explanations of state-by-state voting laws color-coded according to how student friendly the process is — green for most student-friendly, yellow for “proceed with caution” and red for most restrictive.

Tennessee and Michigan are red states: both states require first-time voters to vote in person.

A New Jersey resident and NYU student, Katie Rotondi, 21, used longdistancevoter.org – affiliated with Rock the Vote — to keep informed about absentee voting deadlines and procedures.

“You have a lot going on anyway and it’s a pain,” said Rotondi. “If it were easier I think there’d be more voters, especially young ones.”

At the same time, it is important to keep in mind the difficulty of administering elections, said Doug Chapin, director of the Pew Center for the State’s www.electionline.org site, which publishes election administration research.

“The system is still figuring out how to digest the huge amount of mobility and turnover from across the country,” he said.

Other popular sites include student-run www.beabsentee.org and www.govoteabsentee.org, which exist solely to make the absentee voting process less confusing for young voters. Www.helpingamericavote.org is a free service that allows companies to generate emails about absentee voting deadlines, and www.countmore.org is a clearinghouse of absentee voting information to educate students on their options for voting in swing-states.

In an age in which one can give money at a click of a button, some are surprised that technology hasn’t made make absentee voting easier.

“It’s so easy to donate and you’d think there’d be a circumference effect” on voting processes, said Cody Vichinsky, 21.

Ultimately, students and citizens of all ages have the burden of navigating the logistics in order to vote.

“I know of some people who don’t want to go through all of that,” said Rotondi. “It’s time consuming and just stupid.”

As for Fu, the student who filled out two forms, an absentee ballot did finally show up in his mailbox.

“Anything that the state runs is unnecessarily complicated,” he said. “I got [the ballot] because I was determined to do it. But some people aren’t going to vote because it’s too complicated.”

Young People in the Dangerous South Bronx Demonstrate that Youth Excitement Over the Presidential Election isn’t Universal

By Ashton Lattimore

While much of the nation may be inside most evenings glued to TV coverage of the fast-approaching election, Noey Smith’s neighbors will retreat indoors for another reason entirely: fear of being shot. Just a few weeks ago, an 18-year-old boy was gunned down just a block from Smith’s home in the Mott Haven housing projects, the area’s 12^th murder this year. And while pollsters and pundits predict that this year’s presidential election will spur record turnout from young voters, Smith and others here say that concern over life and death trumps political rhetoric among young people who live in troubled neighborhoods.

Much has been made of the unprecedented level of youth engagement in this year’s presidential election. During the primaries and caucuses, voters aged 18 to 29 nearly doubled their turnout from previous elections, according to data compiled by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, known as CIRCLE. Among young people, this election has been a hot topic: in a nationwide poll conducted by Rock the Vote, an organization that aims to increase the youth vote, 57 percent of respondents said they are following the race “very closely,” 92 percent have been discussing it with friends and family, and an astounding 87 percent say that they plan to vote in November. But come Election Day, despite the excitement, some members of the storied youth demographic likely won’t show up to the polls.

In past presidential elections, only half of eligible 18-to-29-year-olds voted. Eligible voters who are minority or poor are less likely to vote than whites and moderate- to high-income citizens. As a result, young people living in areas like Mott Haven—an overwhelmingly Latino and African-American neighborhood whose residents languish at the rock bottom of the income scale—are at high risk for disengagement from the political process.

Smith, 25, who has lived in Mott Haven since he was 10 years old, is one of the disengaged. The father of a six-month-old son, he lives in the housing projects with his mother and works at a department store downtown. He cast a vote for John Kerry in 2004. But after being disappointed by the election’s outcome — which he says only added to the wariness he felt after the 2000 voting debacle in Florida — he has no plans to head to the polls this year.

“My vote ain’t count last time,” he said. “That’s why I’m not into all that no more.”

Last year Mott Haven, one of the poorest ZIP codes in the nation, saw 14 murders and 432 felony assaults, according to police statistics. The housing projects in particular are hot spots for narcotics activity and violence.

“This place is a trap,” he says. “I’ve gotta get out of here before I get caught up in some bull—-. There’s nothing out here but death and garbage.”  And voting, he says, is unlikely to change that.

Smith’s friend, who would only identify himself as Y.B., said he wasn’t interested in the election either. Even if he was, he said, “I can’t vote; I got felonies.”

Y.B., 21, maintained that even people in his neighborhood who aren’t legally barred from voting are unenthusiastic about politics.

“Around here, most people don’t vote,” he said. “A lot of people I know don’t even think about that.”

While political apathy appeared common in the neighborhood, a few residents did betray the new level of political engagement that many say has swept America’s youth.

Joseph Aliston, 23, moved to the Mott Haven Houses from Long Island only a month ago. A 2006 graduate of Johnson and Wales University in Miami, Aliston majored in business administration and now works as a restaurant manager at the International House of Pancakes in the Bronx. Like many residents, Aliston is concerned about the violence and poverty that plague Mott Haven. But that hasn’t stopped him from keeping a close eye on this election.

In the 2004 race, he said, “I didn’t know who was for what,” and he simply voted the way his family suggested. But this time around, he’s been watching the debates and learning the candidates’ platforms. “This is the first time that I’ve actually followed what’s been going on,” he said.

College-educated youth like Aliston are significantly more likely to vote than those with no college experience, according to CIRCLE. During this year’s Super Tuesday primaries, for example, 8 out of 10 voters between 18 and 29 years old had gone to college, even though half of all eligible voters in that age group have never enrolled. A neighborhood like Mott Haven, where 60 percent of residents never even graduate from high school, is fertile ground for political apathy.

Ivey Peterson, 21, is another Mott Haven resident who attended college and, like Aliston, plans to vote in the upcoming election. She returned from school in Albany earlier this year without finishing her degree, but hopes eventually to resume her education and become a nurse. In the meantime, she is working as a waitress at Applebee’s. For Peterson, excitement about an African-American president as well as growing fears about a recession have offered more than enough motivation to head out to the polls. She hopes her enthusiasm will be infectious in the neighborhood.

“I’m trying to get my friends to vote, because it’ll be their first time too,” she said.

Both Aliston and Peterson believe Obama’s election could help change places like Mott Haven for the better. “I think he’ll really try to clean up the streets,” Aliston said.

But many in Mott Haven are less optimistic.

Darrel Lopez, 22, who has never voted and doesn’t plan to, believes the presidential candidates are simply too out of touch to make a difference in his world.

“Look how rough my block is: people here are struggling every day,” said Lopez, who lives at the nearby Mitchel housing projects. “And what do you see when you go to their neighborhoods? Nice houses, picket fences, people with money. They’re not helping us.”

Young. Urban. Republican: At NYU, Finding Fun in Being (Politically) Right

By Tim Loh

Hampton Williams and his friends are staked out in the back corner of the Village Pourhouse.  Surrounding them are flat-screen TVs, half-empty beers and McCain-Palin posters propped against the wall.  They chat lightly and sip beer in anticipation of the vice-presidential debate.  And they stick together; when you’re young and conservative in New York, there’s safety in numbers.

The debate begins and battle-lines emerge in the bar.  Biden attacks and most of the Pourhouse crowd cheers, while the band of rightists wince and roll their eyes.  Palin counters and the crowd hisses.  The young “mavericks” in back jump to their feet and high-five.

Meet the College Republicans of New York University — a growing bloc of conservatives in one of America’s deepest wells of liberalism.  They constitute “the true alternative lifestyle at NYU,” according to their website.  And as the election season has heated up, their numbers and enthusiasm are reaching levels like never before.

The club started this semester with about 50 members attending its weekly meetings. Recent weeks have seen that number swell upwards to 70 – twice the attendance of its counterpart, the College Democrats. For the past few sessions, the GOP group has had to move to a larger room.  But even there, latecomers are stuck standing in the back or sprawling on the floor.

Williams, the club president, attributes the rise in popularity to the liberal atmosphere that pervades campus even more intensely come election season.  The liberals can get their news and political camaraderie practically anywhere, he said.  But for the conservatives on campus, the outlets are scarce.

“We’re the only place; it’s sort of a safe haven,” said Williams, a senior hoping to attend law school next year.  “If we aren’t active, we can’t expect anyone else to tow our way.”

As a result, the club has become a refuge for a variety of ideologies. About a third of the regulars are self-defined Libertarians. In recent weeks, Williams added, a smattering of Democrats has been coming to meetings, concerned that Obama’s experience doesn’t yet translate to executive mettle.

The club has worked closely with the off-campus McCain-Manhattan, an all-volunteer grassroots effort to keep the Republican Party in the White House. Being young and in Manhattan’s minority has its privileges. When Sarah Palin came to New York in late September, 10 club members got to meet her and even ride in her motorcade.

A few weeks later, on the eve of the final presidential debate, at Hofstra University, 15 club members worked at a fundraising dinner for McCain-Palin in the Grand Hyatt at Times Square.  They met both the candidates and supporters such as Donald Trump and Stephen Baldwin.

On campus, the club is active and tight knit, fielding intramural sports teams in men’s football and co-ed soccer. But the club is most visible when it confronts its peers.  At a student council voter registration drive on October 1, Williams and freshman Andrea Catsimatidis took on the College Democrats in a passionate debate. The sides swapped views on the economic crisis, foreign relations and the relevance of experience in selecting a president.

The crowd was cordial and – predictably – not behind them.

Joe Puglisi, a senior music business major, said:  “I was glad to see the College Republicans here, despite no one actually supporting them. Both sides made good points. But the Democrats felt the love much more from the crowd.”

At the following night’s meeting, guest-speakers Brett Joshpe and S.E. Cupp advised the club on how to counter their liberal professors and classmates. The two young authors, who co-wrote the new book “Why You’re Wrong About the Right,” suggested various ways to debunk the stereotypes liberals use about conservatives.

They urged members to be active voices in local and national politics. They encouraged them to write Op-Ed pieces and letters to the editor, and to name professors who treat conservatives unfairly in the classroom. And they reminded them to have fun with it.

“Everyone in New York assumes those around you are liberal,” said Joshpe, a recent Cornell grad and former College Republican, who said he was astounded by the turnout at NYU’s chapter. “You can make it incredibly uncomfortable for them. I get great satisfaction in expressing my disagreement.”

Being in the minority is something new for freshman Sean Kross, a biochemistry major from Hagerstown, Maryland. He’s adjusting quickly, though.  “Often you’ll see other Republicans in the park or just walking to class, and you’ll be like, ‘Hey! You going to Young Republicans tonight?’ And like a million people will look at you on the street like you have 18 heads. It’s a strange feeling. But it can be enjoyable.”

In years past, the club has used this outsider status as a license for some “liberal feather ruffling,” as they call it. They held an affirmative action bake sale in 2005, charging prices on a sliding scale – white males paying the most, black females paying the least.

Two years later, they put on a game of “Catch the Illegal Immigrant.” Participants hunted around campus for a student wearing a nametag that read “Illegal Immigrant.” The first person to catch the ‘alien’ and turn him in to ‘authorities’ won a gift certificate.

Both events led to campus protests and heavy media coverage.  The latter landed member David Laska on television shows like Geraldo Rivera, where he was lambasted, and the Glen Beck Program, where he was praised.  Keith Olbermann honored then-president Sarah Chambers as the day’s “Worst Person in the World.”

Williams said that their hands had been forced:  “A lot of these things just come to us. Other clubs aren’t interested in discussing the issues – or at least they say they aren’t – so we have to provoke their interest to prove that the issues really are important… We’re not being racist at all; we’re simply illustrating the absurd by being absurd ourselves.”

As a result of the illegal immigration game, the university hosted a panel discussion to address immigration. Professors and activists spoke on the issue and more than 400 students attended.

While the prospects for Election Day remain uncertain, at least one thing is clear: This year, win or lose, more liberal feather ruffling is likely.  As a recent meeting came to a close, one member announced a guest speaker for early December:  Ann Coulter.  Hoots and hollers ensued.

“She called us the Holy Grail!” a student exclaimed. “She was like, ‘Can you imagine the protests?’”