UDC, Howard host early voting drives

Local students thought they were getting concert tickets. Instead, with a little help from local radio DJ, Big Tigger, they registered for a chance to impact history."Me being out here encourages people to come outside, thinking they're going to get some free tickets, and I'll trick them into getting registered!" the radio personality said.

The popular D.C. urban-format station, WPGC, broadcasted live at the University of the District of Columbia last Thursday as a part of the campus's on-going campaign to get UDC students registered to vote. According to Big Tigger, the campaign is proving to be successful.

With a declining economy and pressing environmental issues, Big Tigger said that is the youth that serve as catalyst for change.

"The economy is nuts," he said. "School can be three times as costly next year as it is now. Students and people in college have traditionally, in the history of America, been the change makers - the people who've been on the edge of making change happen." Derrick Minor couldn't agree any more. The upcoming 2008 elections will be Minor's first opportunity to let his voice be heard through the power of the vote, thanks to the efforts of WPGC.

"I knew I needed to get registered to vote because with this presidential election, it really matters!" the UDC student said.

Despite the generation's lack of participation in past elections, the 2008 election will reflect a more politically active youth than in years past. When the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1972, 55 percent of eligible youth voted. Since then, youth voting participation dropped until MTV's efforts in mobilizing youth voters increased the youth voter turnout in 1992 to 52 percent. The Bush-Kerry election also led to a spike in youth turnout in 2004.

According to Karlo Marcelo, a research associate at the Centre for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, the youth's political energy seems to be favoring one presidential candidate more than the other.

"We are clearly seeing more energized youth," Marcelo said. "More young people are volunteering in political campaigns. They bring enthusiasm and that intangible buzz seen in rallies, especially Mr. Obama's."

A big issue here in the District is the constituents, especially the youth, not feeling their vote counts. Colin Touchey, coordinator of Student Outreach and Leadership Development at UDC, challenges eligible DC residents to get out and vote to make a change.

"If you think that your vote doesn't count, turn out to vote and see what happens," the coordinator said. "If everybody showed up and voted, we'd have a very different landscape than we do have in the city."

With the youth vote serving as an integral part of the upcoming general election, Howard University hosted a voter registration and absentee ballot casting drive Sep. 18 and 19, most students looking to help elect the nation's first Black president.

"We just wanted to get people, the Howard community and the D.C. community in general, registered to vote," said Anika Forrest, a sophomore sociology major and event volunteer.

A little more than a minute was, in fact, all it took for freshman biology major Gabbi Norman from Orlando, Fla. to cast her vote.

Florida, a swing state, has been among the hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis and recent Wall Street meltdown earlier this week has many feeling that recent economic shakeups are what could win Obama the election.

A Sept. 18 Gallup Poll shows Obama (D-Ill.) leading Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), by four points as consumers grow increasingly negative. Adding to his momentum, Obama released a "Plan For Change" ad earlier this week where he speaks plainly about the economic crisis and what he plans to do to address it, which includes a $1,000 tax break for the struggling middle class.

As seats at the registration drive filled with young voters, who all happened to be female, Norman answered the question of whether Gov. Sarah Palin's inclusion on the Republican ticket could sway the female vote with a resounding "no."

"I really only think he picked her so he'd have the sympathy of the women voters," Norman said, referring to Sen. Hillary Clinton's losing the Democratic nomination. " . I think it was a bad decision on his part." Touchey encourages youth to become politically involved on all levels.

"Voting is just the first step," he explains. "You should be getting active locally in what's going on in your community so that you can shape who's going to be running. You need to be active in the political party, be aware of the issues and write letters to the editor when something's going wrong in the newspaper and you want to see it corrected. Voting is where we think we should stop. We think it's the ceiling, when actually, it's the floor.