Have you registered to vote yet?
That's the question the Washington State Public Interest Research Group (WashPIRG) and the ASUW are asking students this week as they launch their Voter Registration Blitz.
By Friday, the two groups hope to get 3,000 unregistered students to fill out voter registration forms. Already, they've registered 1,000 students, said WashPIRG campaign coordinator Lucas Olson.
The registration drive is part of the New Voters Project being undertaken by PIRGs across the country to increase youth turnout at the polls this November.
Only about one-third of eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 24 voted in the 2000 presidential election, according to The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). In 2004, only 44 percent voted.
As a result, members of Congress tend to focus on issues that affect older voters, such as social security reform and funding for Medicare, Olson said.
"We're hoping in future elections that politicians will focus more on student issues and recognize students as a significant voting bloc," he said. "Democracy is most effective when all constituent groups participate, and right now students aren't participating."
In addition to recruiting new voters, WashPIRG and the ASUW are asking registered students to fill out "pledge-to-vote cards" indicating their intention to vote in the coming election.
More than 1,000 UW students have pledged to vote so far, Olson said. WashPIRG will report those numbers to candidates' offices this year to let them know students are not only registered, but planning to show up.
"That way, politicians will know students are actually voting and will focus their campaign on student issues," Olson said.
The ASUW's partnership with WashPIRG on the New Voters Project was a natural one, said Bryce McKibben, director of the ASUW Office of Government Relations.
"It really falls into the line of what the mission of ASUW is: student involvement," McKibben said. "We can only do so much on a campus level as far as getting students heard and involved. Sometimes we have to make sure we're getting students heard
on a national level."
Other students across the country have similarly become concerned that low youth-participation in politics is hurting the future of the United States. At Middlebury College in Vermont, students recently formed a group called The Young Americans
Fund to urge congress to address topics that affect young people.
The group is focusing on global warming, the national deficit and political ethics because its members believe those issues have the most long-term implications, said President Derek Schlickeisen.
Members of The Young Americans Fund are placing banner ads on MySpace and Facebook displaying their evaluations of different senators and representatives' performance in those areas, Schlickeisen said.
"Decisions today are the ones that are going to affect our future, and most young people aren't aware of it," he said. "What we're trying to do is get young people informed about their members of Congress' commitment the issues that will matter in the future and get them to call their offices and share their opinions."
The ASUW and WashPIRG will also distribute politicians' office numbers and urge students to call them this week, Olson said.
"This is a very effective way to completely flood their phone lines," he said. "We want them to pay attention now."
