rock the vote

Future and First-Time Voters: Rapping the Vote in South L.A

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

Last month 20/20 reporter John Stossel argued that uninformed voters should stay home on Nov. 4 rather than cast a ballot.

“Voting is serious business,” he said. “Democracy works best when people educate themselves. So maybe instead of telling people things like ‘Rock the Vote,’ these groups should say ‘Rock or Vote.’”

But casting a ballot and performing music aren’t all that different. Both are platforms from which to voice your opinion.

A Place Called Home, a non-profit youth center in South Los Angeles that offers free tutoring and other activities to local residents up to the age of 20, is a living embodiment of this idea. There future voters (aged 12 to 15) can record a piece like “If I Was President,” allowing them to sound off on current events, including gang violence, the price of gas, the global food shortage, and the war in Iraq.

[audio:http://www.popandpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/if-i-was-president.mp3]

APCH boasts a two-year-old, $62,000 mini-recording studio and recently released its first album of student-produced and performed music. Not all APCH students participate in the music program—the center offers myriad other activities, including sports and dance—but all of these young people share one thing in common: they reside in some of the most gang-infested neighborhoods in the country, and many look to APCH as a way to escape that world.

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Lawyers Gear Up for an Election Day Fight

Monday, October 6th, 2008

As the American public ponders who they’ll vote for in the 2008 presidential election, lawyers behind the scenes are gearing up to ensure that everyone’s vote counts.

In the battleground states like Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Virginia, and Nevada, the Democratic and Republican parties are deploying teams of lawyers at the polls to ensure that bureaucracy and voting violations don’t take place on Nov. 4.

The Ledger.com of Lakeland, Florida reported Oct. 5:

“In the past, the Election Day process wasn’t considered to be as crucial as the campaign that led up to that,” said Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer. “Now we see that the Election Day process is equally as important, or more so.”

Since the historic 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush, voting will never be the same. Many people still remember the notorious “hanging chads” in Florida and going to bed on the eve of the 2000 election thinking Al Gore had won the presidency bid. Since this debacle, Help America Vote Act (NAVA) of 2002 was passed to nix punch card (read: chads) voting systems, create the Election Assistance Commission to watch over Federal elections, and  establish minimum election administration standards. Thus, lawyers are showing up at the polls, especially in key swing states, to ensure NAVA is followed to the letter.

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American Idol president

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

More on the ATT&T and Rock the Vote partnership we reported on a couple weeks ago… Here’s a video on the collaboration as it was announced in the weeks before the Iowa caucus. The idea is to get young people to text each other about politics and thus motivate each other to express their views, inform the campaigns, register to vote and get to the polls. In what we’re not sure is horrifically depressing or comically real or both are the insights on the plan offered by ATT&T Marketing Director Rich Robbins, who at about the 1:17 mark above starts in all about how ATT&T has partnered with American Idol for years, “helping America choose the next pop star.” According to him, that’s right, this plan will similarly help Americans choose the next U.S. president. Egad. World, this is how it works now! Welcome to the future.

Question: Are people actually using the plan? Is it getting New Hampshirites to the polls today?

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On youth voter swarm

Friday, January 4th, 2008

samrtv.jpg

On the heels of the caucus results, where young voters had a large influence on the outcomes, we talked to Kat Barr, Education Director for Rock the Vote and one of the organization’s main bloggers, about what has been changing in youth politics since Rock the Vote opened shop in 1990. Read the interview and peep some Rock the Caucus flickrs after the jump.

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Obama, Huckabee and the kids

Friday, January 4th, 2008

The message last night in Iowa was a clear: Please let’s change the whole mess up!

Sounding the opening bell on the 2008 elections, caucus-goers voted overwhelmingly for a first-term African-American senator on the left and an anti-BigMoney governor on the right. Key to the victories of both men was the mad increase in participation of young voters. The numbers are amazing. You know the way it sounds when someone sits down next to you somewhere and is moving to the music in their headphones and you think Yeah that sounds pretty good and then they let you have a listen and it’s more than good, it’s banging— well that sound is how the numbers look.

Youth turnout rate nearly tripled this time around, going from 4 percent in 2004 to 11 percent last night. Young voters supported both winners by the largest margins of any age group. According to a CNN poll, among 17-to-29-year-old Democrats, 57 percent supported Barack Obama; among 17-to-29-year-old Republicans, 40 percent supported Mike Huckabee. What’s more, the percentage of Democratic caucus-goers under the age of 30 (22 percent) was greater than the percentage of people under 30 who live in Iowa (21 percent). All of which reflects national trends noted since 2000. Since then and before last night, 6.2 million new voters under 30 years of age had cast ballots. And this year, 44 million Americans under 30 will be eligible to vote, more than one-fifth of all U.S. voters.

Was Obama right to target the much maligned “apathetic” youth? Oh yes he was. He got the youth vote and he got the woman vote and he got the white vote. In a 95 percent white state, Obama killed. He didn’t do it alone, of course, and it couldn’t have hurt that the man nailed this last of his caucus ads, hitting the two-minute mark exactly. Swish and the buzzer!

Addition: For anecdotal reporting on what went on inside the caucuses, ie, more about the youth takeover, read these three quick Salon dispatches.

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