New Voters Project

What's New

Recent congressional scandals demonstrate the role of powerful interests and their lobbyists, as they engage in unseemly practices from accepting gifts and travel junkets to outright bribery.

How You Can Help

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

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 the rest of the population. Young potential voters feel excluded, disenfranchised and cynical about 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.

With congressional midterm elections coming up in late 2006, the New Voters Project is expanding its staff pool, and forging relationships with new colleges, universities and other educational facilities where the Project’s professional organizers will work to register young people.

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 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 hardworking 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 registed 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.

ISSUES