We all need to do more to ensure that, when it comes to our elections, everyone participates and everyone's voice is heard. Only then can we create a democracy that’s more fully of, by and for the people.
The Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project is America’s oldest and largest nonpartisan youth voter mobilization program. We started the project in 1984, after witnessing an alarming decrease in youth voter turnout over the previous decade. Over the last twenty years, we developed our theory of the “cycle of mutual neglect” to help explain why youth voter turnout was so weak.
Following a successful effort by the Arizona Student Vote Coalition to register thousands of young voters across the state, legislators from both Chambers and both parties joined with student leaders from across the state in a news conference to highlight the importance of youth turnout this Election.
A new survey of state laws and election officials shows that, on the eve of the 2008 general election, twenty states do not have laws, regulations or systems in place to properly implement a federally mandated 90-day pre-Election Day ban on systemic voter list purges. The survey, Vanishing Voters, was conducted during the summer of 2008 by the Arizona PIRG Education Fund.
