Statewide, new-voter registration hits record
Washington's voter registrations is up by more than 280,000 new voters this year, bringing the total to a record 3,515,393, officials said Tuesday.
By Noelene Clark
Seattle Times staff reporter
Ballard High School senior Mike Gore won't be old enough to cast a ballot Nov. 4, but he's mustered more than 100 votes for his candidate, he estimates.
"With all the people I've registered to vote and all the people I've talked to, I think that has done a lot more for the cause than me casting one ballot," said Gore, 17.
Efforts by Gore and others are paying off. Statewide, there are more than 280,000 new voters this year, bringing the total to a record 3,515,393, officials said Tuesday.
The count doesn't include a last-minute surge leading up to the Oct. 4 deadline; tens of thousands of new applications are still being processed, said Secretary of State Sam Reed. Voters can register in person until Oct. 20.
Candidates and campaigners from both major parties attribute the increases for the 2008 general elections — at least in part — to those 18 to 24 years old.
"I've never been in a campaign that's had so much young energy," said Andrew Caldwell, an Obama advocate who helped lead volunteer efforts to register voters.
"Young people really drive the staff work," said Nathan Johnson, 24, executive director of the King County Republican Party. "It's young people who are working on the campaigns, making the person-to-person contact ... our generation's contribution to the election cycle."
At the end of 2007, Washington had about 261,000 active voters ages 18 to 24 — about 8 percent of the state's registered voters, according to the Secretary of State's Office. As of Sept. 26 this year, the 316,000 voters 18 to 24 constituted about 9 percent of the total, an increase of 55,000 young voters.
Zach Ruby, 20, a leader in the UW club Students for Barack Obama, said that most students who approach the group's voter-registration table are already registered, but they'll ask for a button — student-designed Obama pins with the school mascot or logo.
"It's the rock-star thing," Ruby said. "People think the buttons are cool, but that doesn't mean that they think that the candidate's cool because of the buttons."
The college demographic is well versed in political issues, and this election may be drawing more young voters because candidates are focusing on issues relevant to them, Ruby said, pointing to Obama's speech on race.
"He is not afraid to speak in complex sentences, which at a university is really refreshing," Ruby said. Ruby hopes student interest will translate to turnout.
Johnson, of the King County Republicans, said his party is also aggressively recruiting young voters, largely through a new program called MoveRed.org, and often targets young people who are not on college campuses.
"Go to any college campus in the Seattle urban area, and you're going to find a host of liberals, but that is just one subset of the young population," Johnson said. "Check out the young entrepreneurs making a real difference, the young professionals having to pay 20 to 30 percent taxes, and you'll see a different crop of people."
Republican voter-recruitment efforts have focused as much, if not more, on the gubernatorial race than the presidential election, Johnson said. And the average age of the people running the campaigns is 24, he said.
"I think it's exciting that folks my age and my generation are going to have an effect on the election," Johnson said.
He attributed increased participation, in part, to technology, joking that young people wanted to text in their votes. He pointed to the YouTube debate and a strong multimedia and Web presence on both sides.
State elections director Nick Handy said he thinks the ability to register online, which took effect this year, had a big effect. The new online registration law allowed voters to fill out an application on the secretary of state's Web site.
"Who knows how many would have printed out a form and the form would have sat on a dining-room table for weeks?" he said. "Online registration really connects, particularly with the younger voters."
Dariene Castro, who works for King County Elections, said she's noticed a large portion of young people among the "thousands" of voters she and her co-workers have registered.
"Sometimes we've had people under 17, even, who wanted to register," she said.
But being a few months shy of 18 isn't stopping some teens, like Gore, from being heard.
"Even though I can't cast the ballot, I can tell others what I think, and in that way I'm having as much or more of an impact as I could have voting," said Gore, who's volunteered more than 25 hours in the past two weeks. "I'm using my time to share my voice."
Noelene Clark: 206-464-2321 or
nclark@seattletimes.com
Information from the Associated Press was included in this report
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company
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