Project to Spur Young Voters Looks to Local Efforts to Up Turnout
By Seth Peavey
March 02, 2005
A national organization is launching a pilot program in North Carolina to encourage young people to get off the couch and into the voting booth.
Generation Engage, a youth-driven program led and directed by activists — many still in their 20s — hopes to connect local grassroots efforts nationwide in an attempt to attract potential 18- to 24-year-old voters into the political process.
“Generation Engage was created to touch young people and engage them in the political process,” said U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., according to a transcript of a speech he gave Feb. 23 at the organization’s launch in Washington, D.C.
It is estimated that between 42 percent and 47 percent of eligible 18- to 24-year-olds made it to the polls in 2004 — well below the national average for other age groups, but higher than in previous elections.
Overall, abut 60 percent of the nation’s eligible voters cast ballots in November.
“I think everybody’s vote is important in North Carolina,” said N.C. Rep. Deborah Ross, D-Wake. “Any effort to encourage youth vote is terrific.”
The nonpartisan organization will begin operating pilot programs in North Carolina and Virginia in June. It hopes to allow young people to communicate with their peers across the country through Internet journals, Web logs and chat rooms on its electronic forum.
The group also intends to recruit young leaders in communities who will focus on reaching out — not just to students, but also to the 18- to 24-year-olds who have jobs.
Students at UNC reaped the benefits of large voter turnout efforts for November’s election — but for people who work the 9-to-5 shift at work, election news can get lost in the daily grind.
Young workers are particularly underrepresented in the political process and often get ignored by get-out-the-vote efforts, said Debra Henzey, executive director of the N.C. Civic Education Consortium at the UNC School of Government.
Generation Engage estimates that 49 percent of people in the 18-to-24 age group aren’t in school. That’s one of the reasons it wants to hit the grassroots, connecting with people who are waiting tables and working assembly lines.
“The (organizations) that tend to be more effective are the ones that have one-on-one contact (with youths),” Henzey said. “It’s the only way to really build civic attitudes that last.”
She added that young people are concerned about many of the same issues as the rest of the population, including the economy, the war in Iraq, terrorism and even Social Security.
“Politicians don’t address those issues from the perspective of young people,” she said.
“Politicians don’t see them as people they need to court.”
If anything, Henzey said, the problem is that Generation Engage is aiming at people who are too old — putting its focus on those who have already reached the voting age instead of younger children and teenagers, who are still developing a sense of civic duty.
“It needs to start (at) K-12,” Henzey said.