From WireTap Magazine: "Chasing the Youth Vote"

[JaneQPublic]

WireTap is the independent information source by and for socially conscious youth. The following article provides interesting insight into the approaches of the various Democratic campaigns to attracting young volunteers and voters.

http://www.wiretapmag.org/story.html?StoryID=16537

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...how seriously are the Democratic presidential candidates taking Millenials (demographers' term for this generation's youth)? We found the answer to be as expected: not very. Youth outreach efforts were routine and shallow.

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Campaigns rely on the labor of unpaid interns to man telephones, canvass neighborhoods, and stamp envelopes. Every campaign office we visited looked like a student union building, but instances of these young armies canvassing voters their own age were selective and few.

A possible exception in this election is the Generation Dean venture. Ginny Hunt and Michael Whitney, the project's young coordinators, said over 250 college chapters have been founded in every state except Nevada, and estimates of student "contacts" with the Dean campaign -- from chapter heads to donors -- is upwards of 4,000.

No other campaign we spoke with had such concrete information on the response to their outreach programs, and was only able to assure us that such programs were actually in place.

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So why the attention from cell-phone toting teenagers in a governor from a small state full of dairy farms and hippies? It's quite simple. "No one talked to them before," said Whitney...

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All of the young supporters at Dean events we spoke with felt Dean's message genuinely reflected a long-needed confrontational attitude for Democrats. "He's as pissed off as I am," said Hemant Joshi...

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