Young Voters

Conventional wisdom says that the youth vote is fickle, that in a world of limited budgets, campaign managers are smart to direct resources elsewhere. But new trends in youth political engagement challenge this long-standing belief. And for presidential candidates seeking to exploit these new developments, the message of 2008 may well be, "It's the genocide, stupid." For the past three years, a stunning number of young people have been active at all levels of the democratic process for the sake of civilians in Darfur, Sudan.

They are a hard audience to court and a poor investment for candidates: young adults who, with some exceptions, are uninterested and uninvolved in politics and do not vote despite efforts to get them to the polls.In Anne Arundel County, where local candidates say they speak to young voters who attend political club gatherings and encourage them to vote, turnout among the 18- to 24-year-olds in the 1994 primary election was dismal.About half of the 41,718 county residents in that age group registered to vote and 3,253 made it to the polls, according to figures kept by the Census Bureau and local election board.

SALISBURY -- From Don Singleton's class on political communication at Salisbury State University, the making of the president 1996 seems a lamentable thing -- populated by the ethically challenged and reported by the unprincipled to the thoroughly distracted.Among these younger voters, the suggestion that "trust" might be a crucial issue in this year's campaign is almost laughable."Trust is pretty much a dead issue," said Jennifer Young of Hollywood, Md. This is so because "politicians are corrupt."

WASHINGTON -- In the 1992 presidential campaign, a saxophone-blowing, star-shaded Bill Clinton managed to rouse a burst of political interest among the voters of Generation X, until then indelibly associated with apathy and alienation.The attention Candidate Clinton paid to young people and to the issues of youth -- his pioneering visits to MTV and Arsenio, the Clinton-Gore cross-country bus trek -- helped him garner 44 percent of the youth vote, making young people Mr. Clinton's second-largest voting bloc, after the 60-and-up crowd.

* Patrick Lippert, 35, leader of last year's celebrated Rock the Vote political campaign, died of AIDS complications Tuesday at Daniel Freeman Hospital in Marina del Rey, Calif., after a two-year illness. In 1991, Mr. Lippert became executive director of Rock the Vote, a nationwide campaign to sign up young voters that relied heavily on MTV. The group registered 350,000 people, and claimed credit for an 18 percent increase in the turnout among 18- to 24-year-olds in the 1992 election.

Is the state Senate about to confront Arnick II? That could be the case if senators once again thumb their noses at the public over abolishing their much-cherished $7 million college scholarship program.There probably is nothing in the State House more egregious to the public than this political giveaway. The entire notion of politicians mucking around in college scholarships is malodorous. Yet the 47 senators cling tenaciously to this perk.The underlying message is that senators are far better equipped to decide who gets a scholarship.

WASHINGTON -- In winning as a self-styled "different kind of Democrat," President-elect Bill Clinton fashioned a different kind of coalition than those Democrats have relied upon so heavily in the past.Preliminary analyses of the exit polls and election returns showed the foundation of Mr. Clinton's support was made up of traditional party blocs.For example, the Arkansas governor won more than 90 percent of the black vote, almost two-thirds of the Hispanic-American vote, a majority of union workers and three-fourths of the Jewish vote.

LOS ANGELES -- In Bill Clinton's seemingly never-ending quest for new television shows to conquer, his debut on Music Television -- MTV to its expanding audience in an estimated 55.6 million households -- turned out to be no challenge at all.If there was any apprehension that the rebellious young generation that has taken to profane rap artists the way Clinton's own took to Elvis would throw him one curve ball after another, it was soon dismissed. The under-30 set, which is supposed to have things on its mind much different from those bothering elders, mostly asked him the same questions the oldsters have been posing to him all this year.

While support for President Bush among voters ages 18 to 29 is slipping, support among young voters for still-undeclared independent presidential candidate Ross Perot has almost doubled since the early spring.The Gallup Poll shows support for Mr. Bush slipping from 48 percent to 34 percent since the early spring -- the largest decline in Mr. Bush's standing among an age group. Based on interviewing conducted in March and April, 19 percent of voters under 30 backed Mr. Perot; his support level increased to 37 percent last month.

The name of Towson State University student Shawndre' Jones was misspelled in an article yesterday about first-time voters.The Sun regrets the error.Marc Baine is the kind of Republican President Bush could do without.A Republican by birth -- his father is active in South Florida GOP circles -- Mr. Baine cast his first-ever vote this year -- an absentee ballot for Democrat Bill Clinton."I think Clinton is more in tune with America," the 21-year-old Morgan State University junior said yesterday.

WASHINGTON -- Change agents running for president probably would do well to leave the ghosts of crises past stashed in the attic. Instead, Sen. Hillary Clinton's latest stumper, Gloria Steinem, is a vision from a time that is, as Sen. Barack Obama's youthful contingent would say, "so yesterday." Appearing in Austin before the Texas primary, Ms. Steinem's words on Mrs. Clinton's behalf merely served to remind young voters why they prefer Mr. Obama. Indeed, the race and gender dimensions of the presidential campaign have been important mostly to an older generation of Americans, including the Clintons, who are slow to recognize that the world they sought to change has, indeed, changed.

When MTV tried to get young people to Rock the Vote, it wound up with plenty of rock but not many votes. And when P. Diddy challenged the hip-hop generation to "Vote or Die," it did neither. But this election year, young voters have been a force in the presidential nominating contests. Full of excitement about the Maryland primary tomorrow, young activists are canvassing neighborhoods, volunteering for candidates and Facebooking their friends, urging them to cast ballots on Election Day. "There's just, like, this amazing excitement on campus," said Jonathan Sachs, 20, a sophomore political science major at the University of Maryland, College Park.

CONCORD, N.H. -- The traffic-clogging lines that curl into Barack Obama's rallies contain a diverse group, from mothers toting young children to bearded professionals in sturdy all-weather boots. But perhaps most desirable are voters like Lynn Xie, who waited in a quarter-mile-long line last week to hear the Illinois senator speak. "It's really exciting for me," said the Dartmouth College student, boning up for her first presidential election. "I just turned 19." Obama turned the Democratic contest on its ear last week with a decisive victory in the Iowa caucuses, generated in large part by overwhelming support from voters younger than 30. Nearly six in 10 in that age bracket supported Obama - more than five times the number that voted for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Conventional wisdom says that the youth vote is fickle, that in a world of limited budgets, campaign managers are smart to direct resources elsewhere. But new trends in youth political engagement challenge this long-standing belief. And for presidential candidates seeking to exploit these new developments, the message of 2008 may well be, "It's the genocide, stupid." For the past three years, a stunning number of young people have been active at all levels of the democratic process for the sake of civilians in Darfur, Sudan.

Young voters faced problems at polls It was great to see the column by Ray Martinez III and Avi Rubin on voting problems nationwide ("Voting system still needs fixing," Opinion Commentary, Nov. 28). But it should be noted that the problems here in Maryland were almost as severe. In Maryland, many young voters began experiencing problems well before they reached the polls. The voter registration forms require an ID number. While many voters use their driver's license number, the form says a voter can also use the last four digits of his or her Social Security Number as identification - and many students who do not have a Maryland driver's license do so. The state, unfortunately, did not process some of the forms that used the last digits of the Social Security Number in time for the election.

The cotton candy was free yesterday for students at Towson University, as were heaping mounds of popcorn. There was just one catch: Students had to register to vote in the general election in November. The gratis munchies were among many incentives offered during Voter Registration Day at the university, the culmination of a series of events aimed at getting students to sign up to vote. Other enticements included the opportunity to enter a weekly raffle for iPods for those who filled out a voter survey.

TEHRAN, Iran - By Iran's official standards, this was risque television. In a rare on-air conversation last weekend with a panel of young people, 70-year- old cleric and presidential front-runner Hashemi Rafsanjani declared that Iranians should have greater freedom to choose the colors and styles of their clothes. "Design and color depends on people's taste. ... There should at least be clothes - no nudity," the snowy-haired political veteran said to a roar of laughter. The image, part of a half-hour campaign ad, was a very different Rafsanjani from the fiery speaker who warned a Tehran University crowd in December 2001 that an "Islamic bomb" would balance the power of Israel.

Six television sets at Loyola University's Andrew White Student Center showed President Bush's victory speech yesterday, and Gina Kim could barely bring herself to watch. "I'm really disappointed," the junior from Millersville said. "I didn't want Kerry to concede. I thought the election would at least be closer than it was." Kim's sentiments were common among young voters yesterday, who turned out in record numbers, primarily to support Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry, according to national exit poll data.

MILWAUKEE - They were the pollsters' worst nightmare - and possibly President Bush's, too. Crowds of college students, many of whom registered on Election Day under Wisconsin's relatively permissive voting laws, stampeded to the polls yesterday, in defiance of conventional political wisdom. Political professionals traditionally have scoffed at the power of the youth vote because whatever their numbers, people ages 18 to 24 have had a spotty record of actually going to the polls. But if Wisconsin is any indicator, campaign experts might have to think again.

AMERICA'S LEADERS hold a dangerous, false and widely held assumption that young people's issues are vastly different from those of older adults. On the contrary, polls show that the top issues among all voters are the top issues among young adults. With that in mind, if Sen. John Kerry and President Bush are interested in mobilizing a few million extra young voters, the message isn't very complicated: It's the economy for us, too, stupid. The key factor in appealing to young Americans, however, is recognizing the need for new approaches to old economic debates.