New Voters Project

What's New

During the 2006 elections, the New Voters Project registered 75,000 students to vote and made 94,000 voter contacts to get out the youth vote. In precincts we targeted, turnout increased by an average of 157 percent over 2002.

How You Can Help

To find out all the ways you can get involved, volunteer or otherwise participate in the New Voters Project, please visit the Web site at www.newvotersproject.org.

The New Voters Project has been chosen as one of the groups that will receive donations through Working Assets this year. Working Assets customers can vote to increase the amount of support we’ll receive. By filling out the Working Assets 2007 Donations Ballot, you can vote to allocate this year’s funding to the New Voters Project. The distribution of funds is determined solely by how many votes each group receives. The more votes we get, the more funding we get. Vote now!

Overview

Democracy is strongest when everyone participates. Yet ever since gaining the right to vote in 1972, voter turnout among young people has been significantly lower than among the rest of the population. Young potential voters feel excluded, disenfranchised and cynical about the participating in the electoral process.

The State PIRGs New Voters Project aims to engage and inspire our nation’s young people by educating them about the voting process, training young activists of all ideological persuasions and, most importantly, aggressively registering young new voters from all walks of life. The New Voters Project is a completely non-partisan effort that champions no legislation or candidates. The project’s only goal is to register as many young people as possible.

Because voting at a young age promotes a lifelong habit of civic engagement, the New Voters Project works to increase voter participation among 18- to 24-year-olds. In 2004, youth turnout increased by 11 percent.

Results

2006 Elections

In fall 2006, the Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project worked on 80 college campuses in 22 states, including Oregon, to boost voter turnout. We forged alliances with student government leaders, faculty and administrators and recruited over 1,100 students to lead or volunteer on their campus. Our hard-working coalition partners and student leaders registered 75,000 students to vote. Leading up to Election Day, we made 94,000 personalized Get Out the Vote reminders either over the phone or face-to-face.

The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) measured the turnout increase between 2002 and 2006 in student-dense precincts where we and other partners focused our efforts. The analysis focused on a set of 36 precincts in Ohio, Connecticut, Iowa, Colorado, and Michigan and found that average turnout in those precincts increased by 157 percent over 2002. Nationally, the increase in youth voter turnout was four times the rate of the general population’s increase (4 percent for youth, 1 percent overall).

2005 Elections

The New Voters Project focused on youth voter registration and turnout in eight states in 2005. We registered over 18,000 voters and made more than 48,000 get-out-the-vote contacts.

An analysis of raw data by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) at the University of Maryland looked at turnout in New Jersey and Virginia, the two states with major off-year elections. Their study indicates that young people voted in bigger numbers in the gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia in 2005 than they did in 2001.

2004 Elections

In 2004, the New Voters Project succeeded in becoming the largest grassroots youth voter mobilization effort in this country's history. We registered over 500,000 18-to-24-year-olds to vote, and contacted more than 500,000 young registered voters during the get-out-the-vote phase of the campaign.

Our work helped stop the decline in youth voter turout. Surveys show that youth turnout increased to 47 percent—an eleven percentage point increase over 2000—with an astonishing 11.5 million 18-to-24-year-olds casting ballots.

ISSUES