Our generation is changing politics—who participates and who wins. 

Normally around this time of the year we hear from pundits and reporters that young people don’t vote, they’re apathetic, just a group of elusive voters and anyone that tries to get them to vote or involved in politics might as well be chasing windmills.

Well, we actually know what gets young people to vote.  You simply talk to them about issues they care about both where they live and where they hang out and they turn out to vote.  Better yet, they also stay involved in their communities year round. 

Increasingly, young people are hanging out online and obviously live in all 50 states including DC.  So if you want more young people involved in politics, you are probably wondering what will work in 2008 to get a critical mass of young people to the polls.  Just how can you get more than 20 million to turn out this time around?  Welcome to MTV’s Street Team ‘08. 

Before the Now, First the Then (or lessons learned)

2004 was the first time we saw an increase in youth turnout in over a decade.  The last time before that was 1992 when MTV’s Choose or Lose program targeted politicians to get them on record about issues young people care about.  Bill Clinton embraced MTV, wrapped himself in the MTV flag just like Madonna did in her famous ad on MTV in 1990, and the youth vote that year helped propel him to the White House. 

In 1992, politicians targeted young people and they turned out.  In 1990, celebrities targeted young people and they stayed home.

The increase of youth voting in 2004 was not out of the blue.  Nor was it all an anti-Bush vote as many would like us to believe.  If that was the case young people would not have showed up strong again in 2006 to helped elect candidates like Jon Tester in Montana and Joe Courtney in Connecticut which each candidate owes their victory to young people.

No, the increase wasn’t out of the blue at all.  Youth voting groups—from partisan ones like the Young Democrats of America, to the non-partisan examples like the New Voters Project, to hipster ones like the League of Young Voters—they all ran peer-to-peer programs.  They all created new ways to register, target and talk to young people.  Whether it was a bar crawl with candidates, a voter registration drive outside of coffee shops and day care centers or a poetry slam contest, groups were trying everything they knew they would like to do (since they were also young) and it worked.

If you want to reach a population and get them to do something, what better way than to go to the very people in that group?

While all of the youth voting groups were busy running their field programs there was a big hole on the media front.  There was no outreach to young people by young people in the media, especially not on a large scale or in every state. 

I am happy to say that is no longer the case.

It’s Our Time Now

MTV is on the cusp of developing one of the most innovative, creative and brave young voter programs to date, Street Team ‘08.

Every circle of friends has the one person who is sending political emails, reminding their friends to register to vote and making them sit through a presidential debate (only with the promise of a bingo game).  Some cultural theorists call them early adapters, mavens, machers…I call them my fellow Street Team citizen journalists. 

A group of young people—from Generation X and the Millennial Generation—are not leaving their state and moving to NY or DC in order to report on politics.  Nope, all 51 of us are staying in our hometowns reporting on politics and what moves young people to the polls.

On the surface, you may not share in my enthusiasm for the program or even see how innovative the Street Team model is.  You see normally when it comes to the “media” part of programs and outreach to young people it is usually celebrity driven or people from NY and DC reporting on what young people think. 

While celebrities are fun and can get people’s initial attention and while the reporters in NY and DC “get” young people to a certain point, they are not driving young people to the polls as we saw in 1990 with the big celebrity push doing ads about voting. 

Unless you live in Nebraska, you probably don’t quite understand why the Ducks Unlimited banquet in the small town Wood River this past weekend, was not only about hunters getting together but also a group of committed citizens who care deeply for their community and the environment.  I do and my fellow Street Team members do as well in their states.

After living through 9/11, Katrina and Iraq conventional wisdom is young people would be turned off by politics since they saw firsthand all of the mistakes made--actually the reverse is true.  More young people are volunteering in their communities and voting.  MTV is now giving all of us a space to talk about it.

Youth groups and candidates continuing to do outreach to young people along with new media projects like Street Team will result in a critical mass of young voters going to the polls.

I’m chasing windmills…so is MTV. And you know what, just like windmills will change the way we look at energy production, MTV’s Street Team will change the face of politics…who participates and who wins.