Getting Young People Engaged in Politics

The aim is to get more young voters, particularly those 18 to 24, to the polls this November in states where the project will be focussed: Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Wisconsin. Organizers hope to show politicians how to do it — with peer-centered, face-to-face drives in precincts that have large numbers of youth.

They have their work cut out for them.

Since 1972, when the voting age was dropped to 18, young people have been increasingly disinterested in casting a ballot for president. Turnout hit an all-time low in 2000, when an estimated 42 percent of voters 18- to 24-year olds went to the polls. That compares with 70 percent of adults 25 and older who voted that year, according to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement, based at the University of Maryland.