Parties extend youth an invitation to vote

10/19/2006

Brady Averill,
Star Tribune
Last update: October 18, 2006 – 9:05 PM

WASHINGTON - When Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean comes to Minneapolis today, he will head to the University of Minnesota and urge students to vote.

This month, Minnesota College Republicans for the first time traveled the state by bus as part of a “Making Minnesota Red” tour, a grass-roots effort to mobilize students.

Using old-fashioned door-knocking and tools of the iPod generation, both major parties are trying to get out the youth vote as the election nears.

In 2004, Minnesota led the nation in youth voting, with 71 percent of people between 18 and 29 casting ballots. Experts say turnout is bound to decline because this is an off-year election. Nevertheless, both parties are trying to persuade young voters to turn out for them in 2006, partly in hopes that they are breeding the next generation of the party loyal.

“Once you vote, you always vote,” said Daniel Shea, director of the Center for Political Participation at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa. “A lot of those voters that came into the political world in 2004 are still interested.”

The DFL Party invested in a completely youth-run campaign called standupnow.mn, which formally launched in September. The group has initiated the Debt Rock Tour to get high school and college students engaged by showing the burden of college tuition.

For their part, members of College Republicans say they intend to knock on every dorm-room door in the state, which the group’s chairman, Tyler Sunderman, said is a goal the group has nearly reached.

Both parties are using tools that came into play in the 2004 election. Alex Cutler, executive director of standupnow.mn, said he has encouraged candidates to create profiles on the social networking website Facebook.com. Mike Hatch and Mark Ritchie, who are running for governor and secretary of state respectively, have fully loaded profiles on the website.

The College Republicans have created group profiles for Republican candidates. And on Wednesday, they launched the video “Hope” on YouTube to poke fun at Hatch’s run for the governor’s office.

On a national scale, mobilization efforts are in full swing.

Young Voter Strategies, with support from The Pew Charitable Trusts, has put more than a dozen groups on the ground to mobilize young voters. They are mass mailing, sending text messages and knocking on doors. They are visiting high schools and colleges, and as of last week, Young Voter Strategies had registered 275,000 new young voters.

“If you reach out to them and ask them to vote, they will,” said Kathleen Barr, national media coordinator for Young Voter Strategies.

Sean Broom, chairman of the Minnesota Young DFL, said stereotypes shouldn’t be trusted.

“We’re not just the MTV generation anymore.”

Brady Averill is a correspondent in the Star Tribune Washington Bureau: 202-383-0015