WALNUT CREEK, Calif. – Could young voters swing November’s election?
One thing is certain: Plenty of people would like to think so.
In the East Bay and across the nation, activist groups are trying to mobilize the 18-to-25 set, with tactics ranging from voter registration tables on college campuses to appeals from rap mogul Sean “P. Diddy” Combs.
So far, young adults give the outreach efforts mixed reviews.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t really care about that stuff,” said 18-year-old John Nguyen of Concord, Calif., a Diablo Valley College student who is not registered to vote.
“They keep promoting vote, vote, vote, but they don’t really talk about the issues,” said 19-year-old Daniel Sancen of Concord, who said he remains unimpressed by Kerry but plans to vote “against Bush.”
Leon Panetta, director of the Panetta Institute for Public Policy and chief of staff under President Clinton, said if turnout stays low this fall, candidates themselves will be partly to blame.
“Clearly, the party that can reach out to this group of young people and activate them and make them feel like they can be a part of our government again will have a tremendous resource,” he said.
“To a large extent, both parties are afraid of that resource because they don’t know how they’ll vote once you get them to the polls.”
About 24 million Americans are aged 18 to 24, according to the nonpartisan New Voters Project.
But for the past three decades, ever since the voting age fell from 21 to 18, turnout among this group has been low. In the last presidential election, it dipped to 42 percent of those eligible (or 37 percent of all those in the age bracket).
Young people themselves give varying explanations for the lackluster participation. Some blame widespread cynicism and disillusionment; others cite the transience of early adulthood or the uninspiring nature of the candidates.
“Bring Clinton back and I’ll vote,” said 19-year-old Jay Lee of Martinez.
Alex Angalet of Pacheco, a 21-year-old college student and a registered Independent, said that although he hasn’t missed an election since turning 18, he sympathizes with peers who abstain.
“A lot of people honestly feel that they’re disenfranchised, that the voting system has failed us and won’t do anything for us,” he said. “One vote really doesn’t seem like a lot.
“Not voting is voting in a sense,” he added. “You’re voting against the system … (that’s) asking me to choose between one old guy who’s going to send me to war and another old guy who’s going to send me to war.”
After some consideration, Angalet has decided to support Kerry, even attending an “East Bay for Kerry” party with his mother. But he bluntly brushed off her suggestion that he organize an on-campus political rally:
“Unless you have a beer tap and a DJ, nobody’s coming.”
A study commissioned this spring by the nonpartisan Panetta Institute, which promotes civic engagement among young people, found that while 79 percent of college students believe that the outcome of the presidential election matters, just 35 percent agree that “voting in a presidential election is a way to bring about a lot of change in society.”
Panetta said these responses are not as contradictory as they may seem. While young people may prefer one candidate over the other, many are left wondering if a vote really can change policy.
“They’re feeling a little powerless in the system,” said Panetta, who’s based at Cal State Monterey Bay.
“If you talk to them more, it’s about the sense that special interests really dominate politics, and there’s a lot of partisan gridlock.They don’t sense that either party is really reaching out to them and saying, ‘You can play a role here. You can do something to help us change America.'”
Panetta said that though he would like to be optimistic about November’s turnout, “I’m worried because of not only what these polls show, but what’s being confirmed by the students I deal with all the time: young people are turned off by politics today.
“And yet I really sense that … if somebody is smart enough to be able to find a way to appeal to that group of voters, it could become a very important force in an election.”
If political parties do little to reach out to new voters – other than parading around each presidential candidate’s daughters – grass-roots groups seem to be in high gear. They’re staffing registration tables on college and high school campuses, at shopping malls, rock concerts and summer festivals.
“I’ve even had teachers give (forms) out in class,” said Michelle Rosenthal, 24, a student at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill who lives in Berkeley.
Elaine Ginnold, assistant registrar of voters for Alameda County, said she’s noticed an unusual number of people coming in to pick up stacks of blank registration cards before the start of each weekend.
Since the March primaries, her office has received almost 30,000 new registrations. Although voter rolls typically swell before presidential elections, this year’s surge started early, she said.
“It could be that there will be more, there’s just no way of knowing yet,” she said.
So far, she said, the biggest increase has been in Democratic and “decline to state” registration.
New voters also can register online at the web site of Rock the Vote, MTV’s pioneer campaign to engage young voters.
This year, Rock the Vote is joined in the registration push by an army of newcomers, among them “Smackdown Your Vote!” aimed at pro-wrestling fans; P. Diddy’s “Citizen Change,” San Francisco-based Punkvoter.com, the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network and VoterVirgin, which aims to convince young adults that “Everybody’s Doing It In ’04.”
Such campaigns might be “good for awareness” but won’t work unless young people truly care about what government is doing, said 24-year-old Daniel Wynn of Benicia.
“We don’t have a house yet, we don’t have a family, we don’t pay a lot of taxes and we move around a lot,” he said.
“When people get mad at someone, then they’ll vote.”
Though he firmly intends to return to the polls this fall, Wynn is dismayed that national leaders have done nothing to change the Electoral College process since the 2000 election.
After all, he adds, if a candidate can win the popular vote and still lose the presidency, an individual vote does not actually matter – especially in his own case, as a Democrat in a heavily Democratic state.
“They always say, ‘Every vote counts’ – yeah, right, sure. Come on.”
Not all young adults are pessimistic about this fall’s voter turnout.
Many report an unusual engagement in politics among their peers, often centering on discussions about Iraq.
“I’ve never had political conversations with most of my friends before,” said Miranda Walker, a 20-year-old college student home in Berkeley for the summer who attended an “East Bay for Kerry” party.
“Many young people, they are against the war; that’s probably why a lot of young people are interested in voting this year,” said Ever Mendoza, 19, of Concord, who recently registered to vote on the DVC campus.
“I think what’s happening nationally affects our age group more than in the past,” said Tina Valkanoff, a 23-year-old Kerry supporter who leads teams of volunteers that travel to Nevada, a swing state, to register voters.
“We are at risk of the draft. Our job prospects have been lousy for a long time. After I graduated, I had no health insurance.”
Michael P. Davidson, the 24-year-old UC Berkeley graduate who chairs California College Republicans, also sees renewed interest in politics.
“We’re the generation of 9/11, and I think now more than ever, we’re realizing that who leads us matters,” Davidson said. “Young voters and college students care a lot about jobs and security. … It’s our futures hanging in the balance.”—

c 2004, Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, Calif.).
Visit the Contra Costa Times on the web at http://www.contracostatimes.com.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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