OSPIRG BLOG

OSPIRG Student Chapter Board Chair Charles Denson's post from Loaded Orygun, reposted here:

"Young Oregonians have traveled far in the last eight years.  Our good friends at CIRCLE crunched the latest Census numbers and have this to say about youth turnout in 2008:

• 18-29 year old turnout increased 11 percent nationally over 2004, while 30+ turnout increased only 3 percent.

• 59.2% of eligible 18-29 year old Oregonians came out to vote, a 4.2 percentage point increase from 2004.  That’s twice the national rate of 2 points.

• Oregon youth voting rates are closing in on older voters.  In 2004, there was a 25 point difference in young and older turnout rates.  In 2008, there was only a 10.3 point difference. 

A lot of people will chalk these numbers up to the Obama factor.  And, no doubt, President Obama’s appeal had a lot to do with increasing turnout.  But, let’s not forget that the underlying trend line for Oregon youth began in 2000, long before President Obama hit the national stage.  Between the 2000 and 2008 presidential elections, Oregon youth turnout increased in by 11.2 points.  These represent years of major growth and success within the student and young person led voter registration drives spearheaded by the Oregon Student Vote Coalition.

So let’s be sure to acknowledge some of these other factors:

• The voter turnout work of the Oregon Student Vote Coalition -  Oregon Student Association, OSPIRG and the Bus Project - have brought tens of thousands of new voters into the process.  Since 2000, the Coalition has helped over 150,000 young Oregonians register to vote and made hundreds of thousands more personal voting reminders.  Hundreds of volunteers have used fun events like ‘Trick or Vote’, data-driven techniques like canvassing, phone banking and text messaging and new online registration technologies such as the StudentVote widget to reach the wired world of the young voter. 

• In addition, young people have been volunteering in larger and larger numbers for over a decade.  Most of that volunteer work has been apolitical in nature, but community-minded in spirit.  So it is not surprising that youth interest in politics has increased as American elections have become narrower and the issues at stake closer to the hearts of young people.

Compared to the sub-50% rates of the 1990s, a 59.2% turnout rate is something to be proud of.  But we should still be doing better, especially among non-college age youth, which remain stubbornly low. 

Modernizing our voter registration system can be the next big leap for boosting turnout.  Voter registration itself is simply a process to evaluate whether or not a resident is eligible to vote, and our still-paper-driven system should be upgraded to increase voter access and efficiency, and to save money.

One step forward is HB 2386, which would allow Oregonians to register to vote online.  Similar programs in Washington and Arizona have been very popular with voters.  Yet another step would be making registration permanent: the need for a voter to re-complete a voter registration form each time he or she moves is a considerable obstacle to having better participation rates.  Proactive registration would be yet another leap - using privacy-protected data from federal and state agencies to proactively determine an individual’s voting eligibility, and potentially enfranchise large new segments of the population."