SAVE

Written by: Bobby Campbell

The week of September 22, 2008 was, perhaps, the busiest in the young history of SAVE. It included numerous meetings, phone calls, and the typical office duties, but it also included two events to distinguish it from any old day at the office.

First, on Wednesday, September 24, we hosted a press conference on Capitol Hill with the People for the American Way (PFAW), and members of Congress, including Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, Congressman Chris Van Hollen, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Congresswoman Susan Davis (CA), and Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. It was a high profile event, set against the backdrop of the Capitol Building, and attracted dozens of journalists.

Our Executive Director, Matthew Segal, Congress, and PFAW focused solely on student voting rights. Topics included the power of 44 million young voters (18-29), the tremendous importance of the election, the failure of election officials to help young voters, and the potential for legislative action. One specific element raised was the Student VOTER Act of 2008 introduced by Congresswoman Schakowsky, which SAVE conceived, developed, and advocated.

What was the overarching message of the press conference? We want you and need you to participate in this election. We understand that there are problems with the system. We are here to help.

Wednesday’s press conference transitioned nicely into a Thursday hearing of the Committee on House Administration, titled “Ensuring the Rights of College Students to Vote.” Matthew testified on behalf of SAVE and all our members, detailing the wide range of problems that students confront when attempting to vote. Congresswoman Schakowsky testified on the Student VOTER Act, an important step to advance the legislation. The hearing was a great success for us, as we have been a constant voice in the ear of hill staffers, explaining the critical need for a hearing on this issue. Simply, it goes to show that persistence pays off.

These events position SAVE for a strong push in the months ahead; however, the work of our chapters will make the real difference. We have chapters working to register voters and provide absentee ballots. We have chapters organizing Election Day activities, including working at the polls. Most importantly, everybody’s eyes and ears are tuned to look for discriminatory election tactics targeting young voters. It’s a great start, but it isn’t over.

Let’s hope that our week of success is a sign of successes to come.

Written by: Noelle Petrillo

The youth vote was a hot topic this weekend for CNN, as their news brief
declared young voters make noise “in campaigns but not at polls.”
According to Carol Costello’s hot button story, youth voters are important
because they bring an “energy and enthusiasm that no one else can” to a
campaign. However, the article focuses on the concern that this enthusiasm
is not translating into votes. DNC Chairman Howard Dean commented on the
issue stating that Democrats are “getting 61 percent of the vote under 30.
Republican candidates look like the 1950s.” The story notes that the web
has been huge in influencing young voters as candidates, particularly
Senator Barack Obama reached out to them using networks like My Space and
MTV. But is this “energy and enthusiasm” enough? According to the
University of Virginia’s Youth Leadership Initiative, in 2006 there were
50 million people between the ages of 18 and 29 but only about 7 million
cast a ballot. Do you agree this energy among youth in the current
Presidential campaign won’t translate into votes?

Watch this news cast at:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/19/young.voters/index.html#cnnSTCVideo
And let us know what you think!

Written by: Matthew Segal

Hillary Clinton could have been the next Democratic nominee – if she had genuinely courted young voters. Mark Penn, her former top adviser, agrees. In a New York Times op-ed piece covering what went wrong, he admitted, “From more aggressively courting young people earlier to mobilizing the full power of women, there are things that could have been done differently.” Unfortunately for Mr. Penn however, this realization came much too late.

Hillary’s campaign recognized her critical mistake in Iowa and at least paid lip service to the idea of targeting younger voters during the New Hampshire primary: “We worked very hard to get young people out in Iowa and didn’t do as well as we should have,” said Clinton spokesman Jay Carson. “So we’re redoubling our efforts here in New Hampshire in hopes of turning out more young people.”

Yet “redoubling” seemed much more like dividing as the primaries and caucuses unfolded. Whereas Obama built a grassroots infrastructure, ubiquitously coordinating “Students for Barack” volunteer chapters on college and university campuses throughout the country, Hillary held a single conference call in conjunction with her “Hillblazers” program. I, along with 800 other young people, was on this call and heard about five hand-picked questions briefly answered before the Senator eventually hung up the phone. The whole event lasted about a half an hour and no future “young voter call” was ever scheduled.

Where Obama held frequent town hall forums with young supporters, rallied constantly on college campuses, sent op-ed pieces to student newspapers and challenged young people to prove the skeptics wrong, Hillary merely sent Chelsea to university lecture halls and thought Ugly Betty’s star, America Ferrera, would be a better ambassador to younger voters than she would. Young voters viewed this as classic political pandering; plus, contrary to conventional wisdom, we prefer substantive policy dialogue over high-fives from a candidate’s celebrity surrogates.

Perhaps most frustrating of all was when my non-profit organization, the Student Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE), tried assiduously to hold a young voter town hall forum with the Senator Clinton in both Ohio and Pennsylvania.

While both Joe Biden and John Edwards on the democratic side were delighted to participate in forums with us in Iowa and South Carolina, the Clinton campaign was almost impervious to our request. After six weeks of no response to our regular emails, calls, and faxes, we finally broke through to the campaign after we enlisted the help of a U.S. Congresswoman and high profile Clinton. Alas, our request for a young voter dialogue with hundreds of college students was denied for no clear reason in both primary states.

What this unequivocally proves is that the Clinton campaign wrote off young people. Rather than attempting to build a student base, investing more resources in youth outreach, and putting up a hard, energetic fight with Senator Obama for our constituency, the Clinton campaign relied on the demographics they knew they could win (i.e.: older women and working class folks) and prayed mightily that these groups would turn out in high numbers. Clearly, if a candidate wants to win their election, this is not the future of American political campaigning.

The winning candidate will be the one who reaches out to demographics beyond where he or she has a stronghold, will be the one who speaks to groups who they are not historically comfortable speaking with, will be the one who writes off no voter and invests in youthful enthusiasm as an outlet for creating more grassroots energy, volunteer membership, and potential swing votes.

There are currently forty-four million eligible young voters (ages 18-29)—comprising twenty percent of the American electorate. With such a large representation in the electorate, it would seem remiss for any politician not to court us and anomalous for any reporter not to mention us. Yet both happen virtually all the time. If I were an adviser to the McCain campaign, I would urge them to confront this historical misstep and look to Hillary’s young voter error as a source of great wisdom moving forward to November.