E-Mail This Article to a Friend Will young voters deliver for Kerry? After the Florida debacle of 2000, Democrats are targeting the typically inactive 18-to-29 set BY IAN DONNIS

CRITICS OF THE BUSH administration would call it poetic justice: 32 years after 18-year-olds got the right to vote because of the unrest — and the military draft — associated with the Vietnam War, a surge of young voters, reacting to what they see as Washington’s misguided war in Iraq, help to deliver the presidency for John F. Kerry.

Although this scenario could prove little more than a chimera, intensive get-out-the-vote efforts directed at young voters could actually make a huge difference come November. Some seek out such disparate strains of youth culture as hip-hop (the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network), professional wrestling (the WWE’s Smackdown Your Vote!), and MTV (the 14-year-old Rock the Vote campaign) in what are essentially nonpartisan voter-registration drives, and are doing so with the message that generational power comes with using the ballot. Others, such as the League of Independent Voters and Punkvoter, are openly and unapologetically anti–George W. Bush; they emphasize that a small number of young voters could hold a significant card in the high-stakes election of 2004, if only they’d shed their traditionally anemic voting habits.

To that end, the League of Independent Voters — a small coalition of young "political artists" and organizers, also known as the League of Pissed Off Voters — publishes a Web site called Indyvoter.org. Indyvoter touts an ambitious field campaign to leverage voting power into "a massive long-term national progressive constituency," which comes complete with a playbook, How To Get Stupid White Men Out of Office: The Anti-Politics, Un-boring Guide to Power (Soft Skull Press, 2004). It also tracks some of the more partisan campaigns, making its pitch to young voters this way: "The 2000 presidential election was decided by 537 votes [in Florida]. In five other states, the winner was determined by a margin of less than 8000 votes (New Mexico: 366, Iowa: 4144, Wisconsin: 5708, Oregon: 6765, New Hampshire: 7211).... [Yet] the rate of voter turnout among young adults is at a historic low. Only 32 percent of 18-24 year olds voted for president in 2000, compared with 42 percent in 1992. The overall failure of national efforts in the past decade to convince young adults to vote highlights the need for bold and creative new strategies that speak directly to young people. It is estimated that there are five million progressives age 17-35 — whose votes would be enough to swing many close elections."

That may be true, but those appealing to the vaunted youth vote have their work cut out for them. After all, there was a cash-money reason why Urban Outfitters sold T-shirts asserting VOTING IS FOR OLD PEOPLE a few months ago. Indeed, voting participation by young Americans has steadily declined since 1972, when roughly half of eligible young voters cast ballots in the presidential election. (It rose again briefly in 1992, when a slumping economy and the novel third-party candidacy of Ross Perot stimulated temporary interest.)

Darrell West, a political-science professor at Brown University, believes something dramatic would have to take place, something like the reintroduction of the draft, to bring about a serious increase in voting by young people. "Young people are one of the hardest groups to mobilize in American society," he says. "They’re transient, and they’re very cynical about American politics, and they think that their vote doesn’t matter." Like many observers, West believes that overall voter turnout will climb this year, but he remains pessimistic about an upsurge in voting among young adults, adding, "For 30 years, young people haven’t been voting, and I don’t really see anything on the horizon that’s going to change that."

There are some indications, however, that despite the apparent ineffectuality of the Kerry campaign, and the megabucks-fueled confidence of the Bush camp, an incipient youth movement and a continued stream of bad news out of Iraq could tilt the election in the Democrats’ favor. Although young Americans — roughly defined as those between 18 and 29 — were generally supportive of Bush’s Iraq policy last fall, they are now the strongest opponents of the war, says Thomas E. Patterson, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the author of The Vanishing Voter: Public Involvement in an Age of Uncertainty (Knopf, 2002). Meanwhile, a national survey conducted in April by Harvard’s Vanishing Voter Project found that 42 percent of respondents between 18 and 30 are paying "a great deal" or "quite a bit" of attention to the 2004 presidential campaign, compared with 13 percent during the same point in the 2000 election cycle. Although interest is higher among all age groups, Patterson says, younger adults show the greatest interest and are far more involved than they were four years ago. When it comes to voting by young people in 2004, Patterson says, "I think it’s going to be up quite a bit this time, but mainly because of Iraq."

A QUICK, unscientific survey of young people near the Providence, Rhode Island, campus of Johnson & Wales University runs the gamut of opinion familiar to academic experts who study voting patterns among young adults.

One J&W student, who says he is registered to vote but will not cast a ballot, conveyed the deep alienation from civic engagement many young Americans feel. Asked if anything would compel him to vote, the young man, who declined to offer his name, firmly answered in the negative. "I’m not too big on politics. I don’t even know what’s going on," he says. "I got bills to pay. They [politicians] ain’t helping me."

Sandra Junco, a 16-year-old high-school student, sounded a similar refrain when asked if she anticipates voting in the future. "It really doesn’t make a difference to me personally," she says. "Whoever’s president, it doesn’t affect us in Providence."

Several J&W students, though, bore out the expert opinion that college-educated Americans are far more likely to vote than those who have not gone to college, and indicated their intention to take part in November’s election. Although politics is rarely a topic of conversation with his peers, Vos Vajda, a 19-year-old from Vermont, says he’s leaning toward Kerry, adding, "We all know we’re the next generation, so we’ve got to do something." Dawn Knowles, a 20-year-old Bush supporter from upstate New York, believes that at least half her fellow students will vote. And although Joshua Merkle, a 21-year-old from Pensacola, Florida, initially claims that logistics pose a real obstacle to voting in his home state, he becomes more resolute as we talk. "I plan to [vote]," he finally asserts by way of conclusion. "It’s important this time. Bush is messing things up."

If Merkle and his youthful counterparts follow through on such statements, shaky as they may be, it could make a big difference for Kerry. The campaign maxim among those targeting the youth vote, after all, is that politics — rather than an electoral maze where votes count for little — is actually a game of inches.

As William Upski Wimsatt, an author, hip-hop activist, and something of an underground cult hero, writes in the introduction to How To Get Stupid White Men Out of Office, "I know what you’re thinking. We’re fighting an uphill battle in 2004. The Democratic candidates are not all we hoped for. Bush has more money. Bush is a few points ahead in some of the polls. The voting machines are rigged. Most Americans are brainwashed by what they see on TV and ... um, no.

"In case you don’t remember, [Al] Gore was a shitty candidate too. Gore was outspent too. Gore’s election was rigged too. And still with all of that, he lost by 537 votes."