Long apathetic, youths show signs of heading to voting booth

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Open Misty Blankenship's scrapbook this fall and among the pictures and ticket stubs you'll find something she never expected to add -- a voter sticker from her first election.

At 25, Blankenship has had the chance to vote in past elections, though she has never been motivated before. Now, she finds herself talking politics, trying to persuade others to vote, even considering volunteering with a campaign.

Across the country, and especially in swing states such as this one, campaigns are realizing the potential of a bloc of voters that has become increasingly complacent during the past three decades, but that many observers expect to come back to the polls in droves this fall.

"I never thought that my vote mattered," said Blankenship. "They say one vote can make a difference. I realized that there's a lot of truth in that statement."

Since the voting age was lowered to 18 in 1971, the number of younger voters has been declining. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, participation dropped from 43.4 percent in 1972 to 28.7 percent in 2000.

The number of under-30 voters and overall voter participation have slipped during the same time.

But this year, voter registration campaigns aimed at the estimated 48 million eligible voters under 30 are more visible than ever.

"There are too many of them out there right now to count," Meredith Imwalle, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Secretaries of State, said of efforts ranging from VoterVirgin.com, a Web site targeted at first-time voters, to wrestling's "Smackdown Your Vote!" and music's "Rock the Vote."

Those groups are bankrolled with tens of millions of dollars in donations and with weeks to go before most states' registration deadlines, they've already amassed impressive results.

Rock the Vote says it has already registered more than 500,000 voters; the New Voters Project has signed up 130,000 young people in six battleground states; dozens of other organizations claim smaller successes.

It's impossible to forecast how substantial the rise in under-30 voters will be on Nov. 2. Imwalle projects at least a 5 percentage point jump. Choose or Lose, among the biggest youth voting operations, is vowing to motivate 20 million under-30 voters to cast a ballot, an increase of about 11 percent.

Polls show elevated interest, too.

A UCLA study says youth interest in politics is on the rise for the first time in 20 years. An MTV poll conducted last month showed 62 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds indicated they would definitely vote this November, up from 41 percent from 2000 and up from the previous high of 57 percent in 1992.

And The George Washington University's Battleground 2004 poll shows 55 percent of 18- to 35-year-olds believe candidates are paying some or a lot of attention to them.

"Young people (are) energized in numbers that we haven't seen in our entire history," said Ian Rowe, the head of Choose or Lose.

This voting bloc is already showing signs it could affect the presidential race.

In Wisconsin, where Al Gore beat George W. Bush by just 5,708 votes four years ago, the New Voters Project had already registered 74,821 voters by last month. In Florida, the epicenter of the 2000 contest, more than 22,000 young people have downloaded voter registration forms from the Web site of another organization, Declare Yourself. Gore nudged past Bush four years ago in New Mexico by less than 1,000 votes; the New Voters Project has already added 13,180 potential voters there.

"Young people get the sense from politics that they're not being paid attention to, and they respond in kind," said Ivan Frishberg, a spokesman for the New Voters Project. "But this year is shaping up to be different."

Jane Elmes-Crahall, a professor at Wilkes University who taught a class last spring on the presidential race, said issues are driving young people to the polls.

"For the first time, this generation is personally touched by war," she said, and "the economy is making it very difficult for young people to find livable jobs."

Pennsylvania State University professor Eric Plutzer, who has written about youth voting patterns, said political parties' canvassing of youth is the most important factor to their expected increase in turnout.

"It's not issues that are motivating people to the polls," Plutzer said. "I don't think the issues are any more compelling than they were in 1970s and '80s when we had severe economic recessions."

Many young people, including 23-year-old Theo Oshiro of Chicago, disagree, saying they've never been more interested in politics.

"I feel that, especially this election, it's extremely important to vote," said Oshiro, who has never voted before.

Still, while most experts expect a bounce among young voter participation, the demographic is still expected to lag behind the overall turnout.

That can't take away from the enthusiasm of young people like Blankenship, who are eager to participate for the first time and equally excited about engaging others.

As Imwalle, of the Secretaries of State organization, puts it: "I think that voting has become, believe it or not, sexy or cool again."