Annual Report 2000
CLA gets out the vote
Some of my earliest memories involve swishing curtains and pulling levers. No, I didn't star in a kiddy production of The Wizard of Oz--I was standing at my mother's side as she stepped into the voting booth, closed the curtain, and pulled the lever (that's how things worked in those days) to cast her vote.
In my conversations with College of Liberal Arts (CLA) faculty members, I've learned that those childhood experiences are likely the reason I've voted in every election since I turned 18. The lessons my immigrant mother taught me about civic responsibility, personal choice, and the democratic process are deeply ingrained in my psyche. For my mother (and now me), not voting would be the same as not caring, and not caring would be unthinkable.
But as it turns out, my experience is far from average. You've heard it all before: A surprisingly small percentage of potential U.S. voters actually make it to the polling booth on election day, and young voters (that's where it all starts, right?) are the most likely to stay home. In the 1996 presidential elections, for instance, only 32 percent of 18-24 year olds voted, compared with 49 percent of 25-44 year olds, 64 percent of 45-64 year olds, and 67 percent of people aged 65 and over. By the time you read this, you will know how many voted in this year's election. Today's educated guess is that voter turnout will be dismal--particularly among the young. [Ed. note: Turnout nationwide was 51 percent; in Minn., 68 percent.]
What's going on here? Aren't young people supposed to be idealistic, involved, and interested in making a difference in the world? A cross section of CLA faculty members are looking into this very question, uncovering the reasons why young people don't vote, studying youth voting patterns, and looking for ways to increase political participation among America's youngest voting block. Their research has the potential to change the political and social landscape in significant ways.
In September, we asked students on the Northrop Mall, "Do you vote? Does it matter?" Here's some of what we heard:
"Yes. Of course it makes a difference. [Minnesota Governor Jesse] Ventura got elected because of young people. Politicians know that, that's why all those bands played at the political conventions--to attract younger voters."
"Yes. Some people don't know how to vote. I tried to apply for an absentee ballot from my hometown and no one knew how to help me do that."
"Yes. If a lot of people think that their vote doesn't make a difference, then that does make a difference."
"Yes. It matters in conjunction with everyone else's vote. People don't vote because they're lazy."
"Yes. If you don't vote you're part of the problem not the solution."
"If I have the right to vote, why shouldn't I? But most of my friends aren't going to vote--they don't really care."
"Voting doesn't really affect direct social change. Organizations and demonstrations are much more effective."
"Definitely. I'm an activist. I fight for issues I believe in and stand up for them."
"In local elections, it matters a lot. But people vote mostly in presidential elections, when their vote matters the least. There are lots of other ways to get politically involved--like working on public policy issues or volunteering for special interest groups."
"Yes. It matters that I vote and also that I can discuss campaign issues which may affect myself and others. Young people feel distanced from the decision-making process. I sign my names to petitions, attend workshops, and advocate with yard signs."
"Yes, every vote counts. But young people are tired of empty promises, the same old thing that politicians have been saying since the day that we were born. We are looking for issues inclusive of the younger generations as well as older ones. I'm involved in as much political action as is feasible. I lobby for issues and concerns that affect me and so many of the people who haven't had much of a political voice in our country."
"Yes. Indirectly one vote matters, but directly (because of the electoral system) it doesn't. The political process is too complex; if people got more involved like going to caucuses, then it would be less intimidating."
Youth Speak Out
This fall, more than twenty speech-communication students decided to "do something useful" with an assignment to create a television broadcast piece. "We need more young people appealing to young people," says senior Tara Josewski, citing the media focus on prescription drugs and social security.
"Medicare? My hips are fine!" complains a student in the public service commercial. A voice-over tells students that politicians won't speak to them until they speak up in the elections.
Instructor and award-winning video producer Pam Cox-Otto mentored her students through scripting, directing, splicing, and editing two public service announcements in the new high-tech Rarig Center media studio. The students-cum-producers sent their finished work to local television stations.
Sarah Holland, Public Service Director of WFTC-FOX29, wrote back: "When I watch a PSA (and I watch a koobzillion of them) I look for quality and message. I was very impressed with the efforts of these students." The PSAs aired on local television during ten coveted time slots the weekend before the election.
After the election, we asked students, "Did you vote?" Here's some of what we heard:
"I had to vote, for the sake of my parents who aren't citizens. But I don't think one vote really matters."
"Yes, I believe my vote matters, and as a citizen I should take part and voice my opinion. I did same-day registration. Where I voted, they ran out of same-day registration forms and had to order more."
"I voted, but I honestly don't think it does matter."
"I voted because I thought it was important. Your vote definitely matters."
The philosophy of voting
You could say philosophy professor Sarah Holtman is on the front lines when it comes to judging the political attitudes of young people. In the undergraduate courses she's taught at both the University of Minnesota and at the University of North Carolina, she presents her students with a cornucopia of readings from all the major political philosophers. In the discussions that follow, she hears just how they feel about what the great thinkers have to say on the subject of voting and political responsibility.
What Holtman's observed over the years is a gradual cultural shift away from traditional electoral values--such as civic responsibility and the collective role of citizen organizations--toward a pervasive focus on individual growth and self preservation. She sees that cultural shift reflected in her students' response to philosophers like Rousseau.
"Rousseau believed that you're supposed to take yourself seriously as a citizen, to think of yourself as a person whose vote matters," says Holtman. "By voting, citizens are doing the right thing for their community and their country." For some of Holtman's students, raised in more self-centered times, voting as a civic responsibility is a difficult concept to grasp.
"I've had students who've come to me and said, 'I don't understand. When you are voting you are supposed to think about what's in it for me, not what's in it for other people.' That's a tension that's been around for a long time, but in recent decades it's become more pronounced."
Indeed, it isn't hard to find students who have opted out of the system.
"I don't care about politics right now," admits computer science sophomore Quoc Huynh, who didn't plan to vote. Kese Mollel, a sophomore, is not a U.S. citizen--but speaking for his friends, he says, "People don't vote because they feel there's no one who represents what is important to them."
Holtman says despite such sentiments, she does encounter students who care deeply about the political process. As the millennium gathers momentum, she hopes for a renewal of political involvement among young people.
Students like journalism senior Michelle Keskey are leading the renewal. "If you don't vote, you're part of the problem, not the solution," she says. Adds sophomore public relations major Mike Lundell, "I'm an activist. I fight for issues I believe in and stand up for them."
A student of the great political philosophers, who preached political involvement as social responsibility, Holtman tries to influence her students to think of voting as an essential part of citizenship. The message may catch on, she says, but progress is slow.
"It's an uphill battle," she says. "Society is not focused on altruistic ideals right now, and to make a change, we need to focus on young people. If we don't, we'll be stalled, going nowhere."
Harnessing the Independent Spirit
Perhaps the key to getting more young people to vote is to present more captivating candidates. Lisa Disch, associate professor of political science, has studied what she calls the "Jesse phenomenon," the surprising electoral momentum that swept former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura into the Minnesota governor's office.
"Jesse is a colorful person," Disch says, "and the choices that the two major parties presented were, if not dull, at least predictable. Jesse looked like something new, something that voters could get excited about."
As the governor's race heated up, intense media attention to Ventura's candidacy, combined with the novelty of his celebrity, attracted younger, often first-time, voters, says Disch. And thanks to Minnesota's progressive same-day voter registration laws, those first-timers had an easy time casting their ballots on election day.
Now that voters have elected a maverick to statewide office, does this mean that we're entering a new era of political activism among 19- and 20-somethings? Disch says the lasting effects of Ventura's victory won't be clear for some time. Only future elections will reveal whether the tide that carried Jesse into the governorship was a fluke or the beginning of a long-term voting trend.
"For some younger people, the Jesse vote was an impulse vote," Disch says. "It was a bandwagon effect, meaning people were voting for Ventura because their friends were excited about doing it, too."
Third parties did not make a strong showing in November. Yet some pundits still predict that victories like Ventura's indicate a national cultural shift away from the two-party system. And young voters, inspired by the Jesse phenomenon, may be leading the shift.
"Younger voters are increasingly calling themselves independent. They are the category where you find the largest percentage of independents," says Disch, adding that political strategists interested in attracting young voters need to understand that they're tired of politics as usual.
"Younger voters are not as confident about the future as the middle-aged voters who are enjoying this unexpected bubble of prosperity," Disch says. "They're the real loose cannons. They are the ones you'll need to look out for.
Votes that Rock
Young people may not take advice from politicians, but they do take advice from their favorite musicians. That assumption, coupled with the desire to inspire more young voters to turn out on election day, gave rise to Rock the Vote, one of the most innovative national voter-registration drives in history. A team of University of Minnesota professors, including psychologist Mark Snyder and political scientists John Sullivan and Wendy Rahn, was commissioned to measure whether the Rock the Vote campaign was a success.
Inaugurated during the 1992 presidential elections, Rock the Vote is an organization whose goal is to encourage more young adults to get involved in politics. During the 1992 presidential election, Rock the Vote made a splash with a series of public service announcements that featured famous music stars and aired on the cable music channel MTV.
In 1996, the Rock the Vote campaign was expanded to include radio announcements as well as a nationwide voter registration effort: Rock the Vote set up registration booths at venues where young people were likely to congregate. At the booths, potential voters were encouraged to fill out reminder cards that would be mailed to their homes just days before the election.
Here's where Sullivan, Snyder and Rahn's team came in: The people at Rock the Vote asked the U team to analyze the success of their voter registration drives. They wanted to see whether personalized reminder cards were an effective way to encourage would-be voters to fulfill their promises and vote on election day.
There were two type of postcards, Snyder explains. Some were generic cards simply reminding people to vote on election day. Others asked people to write in their own words why they were going to vote. "So come the end of October," he says, "their own words would be staring them in the face"-- words that would remind them of their personal investment in the election.
After the elections, the team contacted participants. Says Snyder: "What we found quite simply is if you get a postcard [telling you in your own words] why you are going to vote, you are more likely to vote than if you just get the generic postcard." A promise made, it seems, is a promise kept.
Studying data from a long-term national survey of high school seniors, the team also sought reasons why voting rates among young people had continued to fall steadily since the voting age was lowered in 1972.
"One of the things the research found was that the level of interpersonal and personal trust has gone down precipitously since the early 1970s," Sullivan says. "At the same time, the level of materialism among high school seniors has gone up very dramatically." Add to that an increased level of cynicism, perhaps brought on by years of political scandals, and "you've got a sure recipe for voter disinterest," he notes.
So, aside from sending every American citizen aged 18-21 a personalized "get out and vote" card, what can be done to encourage more young people to participate in the political process?
Eric Riedel, a Ph.D. candidate, studied patterns of political involvement among high school seniors. What he found was that involvement in certain types of school-sponsored community service programs helped increase the likelihood that a student would vote. "In most cases--but not all--involvement had a positive effect," Riedel says. "It helped make the young people feel like they were an important part of a larger community."
Results like these help confirm other findings about political involvement, Snyder says. Being part of a community and feeling a personal stake in an election's results makes a person much more likely to participate in the electoral process. The next step is to make those feelings of community stick throughout a lifetime.
The stakes, in Snyder's view, are very high--nothing less than the very future of the democratic process. As he sees it, a nonvoting young person surely won't be voting by age 40 or 50 either (historically an age group with the highest level of voting participation) without a significant level of community encouragement. Collectively, the erosive impact is enormous. "That's part of why I think it's so critical to be looking at the factors that lead to the decision to become a voter," says Snyder. "We're not just talking about this one election, but the rest of the elections to come."
Starting Young
If kids could vote, what would our country look like? In some parts of the country kids as young as kindergarten age can vote. They have their own polling stations set up right alongside those used by their parents. And some schools even require their students to vote.
Of course the votes cast by children don't count toward the general election. But they do count toward a valuable lesson in citizenship and civic responsibility. The idea behind this nationwide program, called Kids Voting, is to instill a sense of the importance of voter participation, even at a young age.
Invented by a group of Arizona natives, the Kids Voting program has spread to communities around the country since its founding in 1990. In the St. Paul Schools, the program is in its first year. The curriculum includes assignments designed to encourage teachers to talk about candidates in upcoming elections and the political issues that surround them.
Dan Wackman, a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, has been studying the effectiveness of the St. Paul program. He and graduate students Shirley Wan, Christina Fiebich, and Patrick Meirick have developed a series of questionnaires directed at students, parents, and teachers. Political observers are eagerly awaiting the results.
"There are some encouraging results from around the country," Wackman says. "In San Jose, for instance, kids and parents from lower socio-economic levels showed a much higher level of involvement since participating in Kids Voting. It seemed that kids' interest was motivating their parents to be more active politically. The kids were asking their parents who the candidates were, and the parents needed to know." In the end, Wackman says, everybody got better educated and perhaps even started a new family tradition--not only talking about elections, political issues, and candidates, but also voting.
"That was the goal of the program, and it seemed to work," he says. "We'll see if the same thing can happen here."
Cookies and politics
Students in Middlebrook dorm had a crash course in the electoral process one evening just two weeks before the election. Joined by assistant professor James Druckman and four members of his honors political science seminar "Campaign 2000," they snacked on cookies, drank lemonade, and talked politics.
Dorm residents asked about campaign strategies, polls, and media coverage. Druckman's students, who had done their own research, provided the answers.
"Are students the only ones who vote for third parties?" asked one resident. Political science senior Kjersten Nelson answered, "That's a myth. [DFL candidate Skip] Humphrey easily won the U of M districts during the gubernatorial election, even though Ventura won the most votes statewide."
Curious about legislative candidates, students didn't have to look far. Junior Jessica Kimpell wrote the voters' guide for the League of Women's Voters.
Druckman's class has been deciphering the results of exit polls and making recommendations for improved campaigns. Says Druckman, "I created this class based on the premise that campaigns do matter and winners can't be predicted by formulas." Election 2000 seems to have proven him right.