By GRANT BOXLEITNER , gboxleitner@news-press.com
Published by news-press.com on April 10, 2004
A steady group of young adults formed to meet and get autographs from members of H****stank, Lostprophets and Ima Robot on Friday afternoon at Florida
Gulf Coast University.
Laura Rochet of Rock the Vote helps FGCU student Angie Snyder volunteer to work with the organization that helps young people with the election
process.
MARC BEAUDIN/news-press.com
That line dwarfed the one registering new voters in Lee County.
Since 1992, MTV’s Choose or Lose campaign and its nonprofit partner, Rock the Vote, have been trying to reverse the I-could-care-less trend affecting
young voters.
Their nationwide goal is to form a line of adults 30 and younger “20 million loud” in the November general election. About 18 million in this elusive
category cast a ballot in November 2000.
MTV’s Campus Invasion Tour is accompanied by the underlying message that voting is cool. Representatives from Rock the Vote were on hand Friday before
the evening concert at FGCU. Combining music and pop culture with the political process has been a successful strategy for MTV and its partners.
“A lot of kids work and pay taxes, but they don’t know how that money is being spent,” said Laura Rochet, 23, a South Florida community street team
leader for Rock the Vote, which has registered more than 3 million new voters. “But they have a lot of opinions about the economy and the war.”
Isabel Vargas, 19, a student at FGCU, plans to vote in her first presidential election in November. She watched last week’s MTV election special
featuring Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.
“No candidate has really been able to connect with the young generation,” Vargas said. “Maybe if they did that, more kids would listen.”
Bryan Lewis, 18, and Tristan Sanz, 18, both seniors at Dunbar High, expect more young people to hit the polls in the first presidential election since
the Sept. 11 attacks, the war on terrorism and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
By the numbers in lee
2002 general election
• Age 18-20 — 6,491 registered, 845 voted, 13 percent turnout
• Age 21-29 — 24,087 registered, 5,387 voted, 22.4 percent turnout
2000 general election
• Age 18-20 — 5,720 registered, 2,323 voted, 40.6 percent turnout
• Age 21-29 — 21,886 registered, 9,504 voted, 43.4 percent turnout
1998 general election
• Age 18-20 — 4,205 registered, 594 voted, 14.1 percent turnout
• Age 21-29 — 21,279 registered, 3,460 voted, 16.3 percent turnout
1996 general election
• Age 18-20 — 5,259 registered, 1,819 voted, 34.6 percent turnout
• Age 21-29 — 22,436 registered, 9,557 voted, 42.6 percent turnout
“If you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to make a stand of what you want to be in life,” Lewis said. “MTV just has that leadership of youth.”
In the 2000 presidential election, 40.6 percent of registered Lee County voters between ages 18 and 20 cast a ballot, a 6 percent increase from 1996.
The Lee County figures for ages 21 to 29 were slightly higher — 43.4 percent turnout in 2000 and 42.6 percent in 1996.
That compares with a 69.31 percent turnout of voters between 30 and 55 in 1996 and more than 80 percent of voters 56 and older. In 2000, those
percentages for those groups stayed nearly the same.
Lee County Supervisor of Elections Sharon Harrington said MTV’s voter campaign works well for students, because “you have to catch them at their level
and make it interesting.” Harrington tells young people they have to show an interest in how their money is being spent or government won’t listen to
them.
MTV doesn’t have a problem commanding the attention of potential young voters. The cable TV network takes an issue from a young people’s perspective
and amplifies their voice, said Jaime Uzeta, a senior director for MTV’s strategic partners and public affairs. One of the major issues facing young
people, for instance, is how to fund their education, Uzeta said.
“What we’ve found is that there is not a big difference between the issues they care about and their parents care about,” Uzeta said. “MTV is about
music, so we kind of use that with the voter empowerment message.”
FGCU freshman Tim Staid, 18, who registered to vote Friday at the Rock the Vote event, said he keeps up on politics by reading the newspaper. He likes
MTV, but said the network at times slants toward the Democratic Party.
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“I haven’t seen any Republicans on their shows,” he said. “They should be more neutral.”
Alex Ebert, 25, lead singer of the L.A.-based band Ima Robot, enjoys the pro-vote aspect of the concert tour. He asked the Lee County Election’s
Office to move its booth to the entrance of the concert and stay a few extra hours to maximize turnout.
The officials agreed.
Ebert said he always asks audience members how many have registered to vote and becomes disheartened when only 40 hands go up.
“It’s a peer pressure mixed with guilt that needs to happen” to get people to vote, Ebert said.
Ebert hopes students will stay involved with politics at the local, state and national level and not “just punch a button every four years.”
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