Tag Archives: youth vote

An Extra Message–And An Ask

Apologies for cluttering your in-boxes, but we have only three months until the election, and I wanted to share this important message from Hoosiers for Democracy– a grass-roots movement founded to combat voter lethargy and encourage turnout by Indiana’s Democrats.

Here’s the request I received last night. I hope you will consider making a donation. Even small amounts help!!

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Dear friends and colleagues,

Rachel, Barbara and I are thrilled about how Hoosiers for Democracy is growing and the impact it is having on educating voters as well as empowering them to act in service of preserving our hard won freedoms and resisting extremism. Our subscription list is growing, and we are expanding our network of allies across the state that help us amplify our message.  After we publish a post, we immediately get emails from campaign managers and other grass root movements asking us to be sure to include them in our next post in our “What You Can Do” section.  We are living proof that “all that rises must converge”.

We are contacting you today with an urgent request for support of a new initiative we have started focused on registering Indiana Gen Z voters, especially targeting districts that have been identified as flippable. We have 60 days to get this done.  We are emboldened by the new sense of hopefulness about the upcoming election, including the recent surge in excitement, donations, and volunteers in Indiana and across the country. Much of this surge is occurring among the younger voter population, but if past trends continue, Indiana likely still has a problem engaging younger voters. Despite some progress being made nationally towards increasing younger voter turnout in the 2020 general and 2022 midterm elections, data suggests that Hoosiers still have a lot of work to do in educating youth and young adults about the potential impacts of voting and civic engagement on their own futures and on the lives of future generations. We have decided to be a part of a solution to this issue. Our friend, colleague and expert on civic engagement, Dona Sapp, has joined with H4D in developing a targeted and strategic 60-day campaign to register young voters in Indiana.  This campaign is influenced by and in response to disheartening data:

  • Indiana voter participation is consistently among the lowest in the nation. In 2020, Indiana ranked 46th among all U.S. states for eligible voters of all ages who voted.
  • More specifically related to young voter participation, we ranked 44th for the percentage of eligible 18–24-year-olds who were registered to vote and 43rd for the percentage of 18–24-year-olds who voted in 2020.
  • Only 48 percent of eligible 18-24-year-olds in Indiana were registered to vote in 2020, and only 39 percent voted. In contrast, 87 percent of eligible 18–24-year-olds in New Jersey were registered, and 75 percent voted.

It is true that, historically, younger voters are less likely to vote in U.S. elections than other age groups, but this is particularly true in Indiana. There are many varied and valid reasons for this.  Experts tell us that young voters are passionate about issues that impact them, yet many are disillusioned with the democratic process. This is particularly true in black and multiracial communities and among young people who did not attend college.

Two more sobering and heartbreaking stats:

  • Among the 65 percent of registered Indiana voters who voted, Donald Trump received 1,729,519 million votes and Joe Biden received 1,242,416 million votes, a difference of approximately 487,000 votes.
  • An estimated 500,000+ eligible 18–24-year-old Hoosiers are not currently registered to vote. This means that younger voters, who often feel unheard and powerless to change anything, could have changed the result of the 2020 presidential election in Indiana through increased voter registration and participation

But the past two weeks have changed things.  Young people are engaged, and motivated and using their creativity and their culture to impact this election.  We need your help in making sure Indiana young people are registered to vote and get them to the ballot box!

Our 60-day Voting is Your Superpower Campaign is focused on registering eligible Gen Z voters.  Dona has designed iPhone stickers (this idea came from Senator Andrea Hunley when we pitched this idea to her), flyers, cards, yard signs, and t-shirts.  We are partnering with our allies including several Democratic party county/district managers and most of the Democratic candidates on the Indiana ballot to help us distribute the resources in strategic sites/venues across the state.  Our goal is to register 25,000 young people and get a pledge from each of them to register 5 of their peers. Additionally, we will invite volunteers in our next post to help us in statewide distribution. We have a great online form for easy registering and tracking recruits from our substack platform. The ‘swag’ includes a QR code for immediate voter registration.

We have volunteers and vendors at the ready, but we need your financial support.  We developed a budget for the materials and are asking for any support that you may be able to give so we can order these immediately and have them ready for distribution.  Based on how much we can raise in the immediate term, we will strategically order the resource we think will make the most impact for distribution.  Timing is of the essence.

We just got an email from Boone County Dems that they are ready to distribute at some key events and are spreading the word.

We are also in discussions with several campaign representatives in flippable districts who are excited to participate. Additionally, because of Dona’s extensive connections with Indiana schools, teachers and students from several of the high schools in the targeted districts have indicated their willingness to get to work on our campaign, including talking about voter registration in the morning announcements.  We have the organization, volunteers, tools and enthusiasm needed to make this campaign a big success. Now, we need the funding to put our plan into action and maximize the impact over the next 60 days.

If you can help, please reply to Deborah Asberry <debbie@debbieasberry.com>and let us know the amount that you are able to donate so we can monitor the progress.  If you know of another person who would be interested in helping us in this endeavor, please forward this information to them, but let us know whom you reached out to.  No amount is too small.  We trust we can immediately raise enough to get us started in printing and distributing.

Let’s do this!  Thank you in advance.

Debbie Asberry, Rachel Thelin, Babara Burke, & Dona Sapp

Yours in democracy,

Debbie, Rachel and Barbara

https://hoosiersfordemocracy.substack.com

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When Frank Luntz is Worried…..

Frank Luntz is one of the people who gave us today’s GOP–a party that has steadily become more fixated on strategies for winning elections than on fidelity to a governing philosophy. He was the guru who coached candidates for office in “framing”–how to use language to describe policies in ways that would seem acceptable to people who probably wouldn’t find those policies very congenial otherwise.

For most of his (lucrative) career as a political strategist, you wouldn’t find Luntz among the legions of concerned party faithful warning  that the party’s longterm electoral prospects are dim. But now, even he is sounding the alarm. And that alarm is not connected to the harm being done to the GOP “brand” by The Donald.

In a March article about young voters, he recited the Grand Old Party’s daunting prospects, noting that

Americans ages 18 to 29 made up 19% of the vote in 2012, and President Obama pulled about 60% of their support. This year, they’re even more engaged: Nearly six in 10 (57%) say they are following the election “extremely” or “very” closely. And it’s just the primaries! What’s more, 87% respond that they are “extremely” or “very” likely to vote in the general election.

And what does this newly engaged cohort think about the GOP?

The Republican Party doesn’t have a problem with younger voters. Younger voters have a problem with the Republican Party, and it is rapidly becoming a long-term electoral crisis.

In our recent national survey of 1,000 first- and second-time voters ages 18 to 26, Republicans weren’t just off on the wrong track. They were barely on the radar with this Snapchat generation, as it is sometimes called….

The problem, or “crisis” if you’re an active Republican, is in their political identification. Fully 44% identify themselves as Democrats, higher in my polling than any age cohort in America. By comparison, about 15% call themselves Republican, lower than any age cohort. The remaining 42% say they’re independent, but on issue after issue they lean toward the Democrats. It’s not that young people love the Democratic Party — they don’t. But they reject the Republican Party and the corporate interests it appears to represent. Democrats can live with this dynamic. Republicans might die by it.

Luntz recognizes the problem, but seems oblivious to the reasons for it. For him, it’s still just strategy–the form of the message, rather than the substance. For example, he blames rejection of the GOP by young Americans in part  on the Democrats’ better use of social media, and says the GOP should follow the example of former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who endorsed a presidential candidate via Snapchat.

What Luntz and much of the Republican establishment fail to recognize is that young voters are rejecting what the GOP has become post-Reagan.

My students look at the Republican party and see theocrats. They see stupid bathroom laws and other efforts to marginalize their LGBT friends. They see corporate fat cats prospering at the expense of the hard-working poor. They see efforts to disenfranchise minority voters and cut back on school lunch programs. They see the Congressional “Party of No” rejecting and obstructing a President they admire–and they recognize that the primary motivation for that obstruction is racism and a stubborn refusal to come to terms with the fact that a black man won the White House.

Research confirms that this generation is considerably more inclusive than those that preceded it, concerned about their communities, and critical of entrenched privilege. When they look at today’s GOP, they don’t see principled defenders of liberty and markets and a level playing field–they see oligarchs fielding armies of lobbyists to protect their tax loopholes and subsidies at the expense of the Walmart greeter and the McDonald’s server.

There is no doubt in my mind that this generation will change America’s mean-spirited political culture for the better. I’m less sanguine about what it will take to uproot the entrenched systems–from gerrymandering, to provisions in the tax code, to intimidation of the judiciary, to the growth of “propaganda media”– that make political change much more difficult.

One thing I do know: mastering Snapchat will not bring young voters into the GOP.

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The Big Question

As usual, E.J. Dionne poses the critical political question: will the young people who voted overwhelmingly for Obama when he represented hope and change stay around to support him–and the Democratic party–now that the hard work of governing has highlighted philosophical and tactical differences of opinion on how best to proceed?

Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, offered a straightforward formula: “When Republican voters and older voters get angry, they vote,” she said. “When younger voters get angry, they stay home.” Thomas Bates, vice president for civic engagement at Rock the Vote, a group that mobilizes young Americans to go to the polls, shares Lake’s worries. “For people who were energized in 2008, it was a time of hope and optimism,” he said. “And when you get to the brass tacks of governing, the atmosphere in the process of legislating has become poisonous. That makes political engagement as unappealing as possible.” More than is often appreciated, the electoral revolution that brought Democrats to power was fueled by a younger generation with a distinctive philosophical outlook. Put starkly: If only Americans 45 and over had cast ballots in 2008, Barack Obama would not be president.