Something big is happening in our democracy – young people are voting.

It’s happened four years in a row. Starting in 2004, our generation flexed our political muscles at the voting booths with 11.5 million young people casting ballots. This meant 47% of 18-24 year olds turned out to vote – an 11 percentage-point spike over 2000 levels!

Again in 2005, we turned out in big numbers in the New Jersey state election, where the youth vote increased by more than 19% from the 2001 election. And again in 2006, the youth vote in the midterm election went up 25% from the 2002 midterm election – twice as big a turn-out increase as the general population.

The momentum carried into the Presidential Primaries in 2008, where the youth vote made its presence known by tripling in Iowa, surging by 25 percentage points in New Hampshire, and increasing in 7 out of 8 “Super Tuesday” states.

And we all heard the buzz about young people in the 2008 Presidential Election. 2.2 million more young people cast votes in 2008 than in 2004. We turned out in such big numbers that it was the first time that young voters’ share of the electorate surpassed that of voters over 65, with young people making up 18% of the electorate and those over 65 making up 16%.

We helped lead the way in New Jersey. At each of these historic moments in youth voting, NJPIRG students were on the ground mobilizing their peers to help make it happen. We worked with the Eagleton Institute of Politics to form the RU Voting Coalition at Rutgers, a team of student organizations, student government, faculty, and university staff working together to help students register, educate, and mobilize Rutgers students to vote.

Last year, NJPIRG Student Chapters and our coalition partners across the state…

Collected almost 6,000 voter registration forms from students

Worked with Rutgers to get an online voter registration tool placed on university websites, which more than 3,000 Rutgers students used to download voter registration forms

Made more than 28,000 personal contacts in the days leading up to Election Day, reminding students to vote through canvassing, phone calling, text messaging, and talking to them out on campus

Why This Matters

Youth voting was on the decline for two decades. The 2000 Presidential Election marked the lowest point of the downward trend, with only 36 percent of young voters making it to the polls, compared to 70 percent of older voters. The strength of a democracy is measured by the participation of its citizens – and for years, too many of our democracy’s younger citizens have been on the sidelines.

Politicians have not paid attention to young people. We know the myth that “young people are apathetic” is not true. Young people care about a lot of issues – and in fact, we’ll bear the brunt of many of society’s most pressing problems. We volunteer in our community, we pay attention to what’s going on in the world, and many of us even work to push for social change on important issues.

But young people and politicians have gotten caught in a “cycle of neglect”. Year after year, candidates have talked about things like property taxes, prescription drugs, and social security – and not about issues that matter to young people. They’ve campaigned in retirement homes and not on college campuses. They haven’t targeted young people, and so lots of young people haven’t voted. And because we haven’t voted, they haven’t targeted us.

All that is beginning to change, because we’ve taken matters into our own hands. Armed with clipboards and pens, we’ve knocked on dorm doors, stormed classrooms and quads, helped our peers register to vote, sent personal get-out-the-vote reminders and helped raise the youth vote for four years in a row. Politicians are starting to notice – between Presidential debates being hosted on You-Tube, Facebook being used by both candidates, and the media buzzing about record youth turn-out, politicians are just starting to pay attention to young people. But there’s a lot more work left to do.

What Now?

All eyes are on New Jersey. Politicians and the media are just starting to catch onto the changing tides of youth political participation. But they’re not all convinced we’ll keep up the trend. If we want every politician, in every political party, in every level of politics to engage young people in substantive conversations about the issues that matter to us, we’ve got to show that we’re still voting in big numbers.

Let’s make them pay attention to us. NJPIRG Student Chapters will be teaming up with our coalition partners on campuses across New Jersey to mobilize young people to vote in the upcoming mid-term elections this fall.

We’ve learned tried-and-true strategies from five years of effective youth voter mobilization. We’ll continue to build diverse coalitions of university groups and leaders to work together to help more students register to vote. We’ll mobilize hundreds of volunteer-hours and train more students in the skills to do effective grassroots voter mobilization. And we’ll make sure the candidates stand up and take notice of young voters.

Register to vote: www.studentvote.org

Volunteer to help with student voter registration this fall: www.njpirgstudents.org/volunteer

Apply for a fall internship to help coordinate voter registration on your campus: www.njpirgstudents.org/internships

Rutgers student and university leaders – join the RU Voting Coalition! E-mail info@njpirgstudents.org