Is Obama the Only Youth Game in Town?

Let me first say that generally mainstream media hasn't done the best job at covering young voters and the youth movement afoot in our country. From 60 Minutes, to CNN, and the NYTimes, to more political wonky things like The Hill, many have fallen, so it was only a matter of time before the Washington Post would contribute their latest round of blasphemy.

The piece starts out by talking about the excitment the media drums up each year about the youth vote actually coming out - and claims that every year its a disappointment.

Wrong! Since 2000, the youth vote has continued to climb upward. Young people turned out in greater numbers each year including midterm elections like 2006. The most easily accessible research will prove that. You don't even have to comb through data to find this info, so already I'm annoyed.

"They make voter registration more convenient, and they try to make casting a ballot sound fashionably subversive. Both strategies have failed," an editorial page writer Catherine Rampell claims.

Wrong! If Rock the Vote didn't have significant data to back up what they were doing, me thinks they wouldn't have funding to soldier onward. But they do. And they have. For example, registering over a million people in 2004, 15,000 Community Street Team members, and signed up 118,000 young people to receive political information and GOTV messages through their cell phones - a pioneering tactic now being utilized by everyone who is anyone. Rock the Vote has done more for the youth movement than than peanut butter has done for jelly.