In lieu of a substantive blog post today, here’s a link to my op-ed on
FoxNews.com, “Why the GOP’s future could depend on Romney’s ability to connect with young people.” I float an argument for modernizing the voting system that I mean (sincerely, and not just for tactical reasons) to appeal to a Fox-News-reading audience:

Most states prevent eligible voters from registering during the very period when interest in a campaign reaches its height, the last month before an election. What business would require you to sign up for its service months in advance and then appear in person at a particular location during limited hours to obtain it?

That is no way to encourage political participation in a great democracy, and it’s one reason that U.S. turnout is usually the lowest among all the developed democratic countries in the world.

A new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University offers some intriguing findings about Millennials (defined in this instance as ages 18-24).

Self-image as a generation: Asked how their generation differs from their parents’, a total of 27% give critical answers (lazier, entitled, more selfish, or generally negative). A total of 21% say they are more more tech-savvy or better educated than their parents. And 17% say they are less religious/moral, or more tolerant, or more liberal. Looking at the historical data, I would say that they are more liberal on some social and economic issues than their parents were at the same age. They spend considerably less time reading and studying, which could be a sign of laziness, although that trend alone doesn’t support a holistic indictment. They are more tech-savvy and perhaps somewhat better educated, although trends in educational attainment have plateaued during their lifetimes. The negative responses may reflect a general tendency to assume that things are declining.

Race: An important respect in which young people are not very liberal is race. Almost half (48%) of the respondents think that “discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.” Fifty-eight percent of white respondents think that’s the case. Note that they are demonstrably wrong: discrimination against African Americans and other racial minorities remains a powerful force. And we now live in a time when the Supreme Court will strike down almost any affirmative efforts to reduce racial segregation.

Ideology: Responses are a little mixed, reflecting the ambivalence that people of all ages feel. A significant majority (56%) say that government has grown over the years because it has “gotten involved in things people should do for themselves.” More than two thirds think (either agreeing or mostly agreeing) that poor people have become too dependent on government assistance. This is interesting since the federal government has in fact withdrawn from providing welfare and housing directly and no longer intervenes in other prominent ways, such as by desegregating local schools.

On the other hand, nearly two thirds think that inequality of opportunity is a big problem. These responses are not contradictory if substantial numbers of Millennials want to see more equality but distrust the government as a means to that end. Trust in government has eroded badly.

Asked to rate their feelings for various groups on a 1-100 scale, survey respondents respond very positively about Christians, Jews, and African Americans, less so about Muslims and Mormons. The Christian Right scores in positive territory at 54.1; Occupy Wall Street is below the midpoint at 44.5. The Tea Party is a little lower at 41, and the federal government in Washington scores worst of all at 40.9.

Craig Newmark has a nice graphic illustrating the rapid changes in state voting laws since 2010, most of which make voting more restrictive. I’ve been thinking about this issue in various ways all week, meeting with key experts in DC on Monday, writing a short op-ed for the Tufts student paper, addressing the issue on a public panel today, and thinking about various forms of useful research we might do during this cycle.

We should worry about the effects of the new photo ID laws and other new restrictions. Perhaps most troubling to me is Florida’s requirement to be licensed before you can register voters; the state also threatens high fines if you don’t submit your lists on time. As a result, a lot of nonpartisan voting organizations are withdrawing from Florida. CIRCLE’s contribution will be some research on the effects of these new policies.

But we shouldn’t allow the new restrictions to occupy our whole attention, because the state laws already varied enormously before 2010. Some were friendly to voting. Election Day Registration is allowed in some dates and has been found to raise youth turnout by some 14 percentage points. Other rules were already very onerous, far more so than in other democracies. As I wrote in my op-ed, “our system is complicated, cumbersome, uneven and easy to tweak for partisan gain.”

It needs a fundamental overhaul, and we should be challenging  basic assumptions. Why, in this day and age, should individuals have to register at all? (There are other ways to verify eligibility.) Why should partisan elected officials get to administer local elections? Why should the voting age be 18?

The Black Youth Project has released an important report entitled “Youth, Race, and Voter Mobilization” (PDF). Some points that caught my eye:

Being contacted about an election strongly predicts voting. Young people who are contacted are 15%-30% more likely to turn out. (This statistic is consistent with our own research. Part of the reason may be that people who are already registered or who are socioeconomically advantaged are more likely to be contacted. But randomized experiments have also found that being encouraged to vote has a positive impact on turnout.)

The Republican Party has historically been much more likely to contact young people than the Democratic Party, although the  gap favored the Republicans by only two points (within the margin of error) in 2008.

Both parties have become more likely to contact young people, and  both parties are most likely to contact African American youth. Thus African American youth were the most contacted racial/ethnic group in 2008–and had the highest turnout rate that year.

The fact that 30% of young African Americans reported being contacted by the GOP is surprising, especially because they voted overwhelmingly for the Democrats. The most widely reported examples of the GOP “contacting” Black youth were negative: robocalls designed to suppress turnout. Perhaps the Republicans deserve more credit than those stories imply, or perhaps some of the GOP contacts that young African Americans reported were negative.

I was under the impression that political activity was channeled through the Obama campaign to an extraordinary degree in 2008, to the detriment of independent grassroots political groups. In fact, 18 percent of youth were contacted about the election by non-party organizations, the same rate as in 2004 and much more than a any time in the previous two decades. Of those who were contacted by non-party organizations, young African Americans were especially likely to receive contacts from churches (21%), friends (21%), and neighborhood and community organizations (17%). The finding about friends is consistent with our research that political discussion is particularly common among working-class, urban African Americans.

The Black Youth Project draws a clear conclusion from its research. Black youth will vote if contacted. Their 2012 turnout will depend on whether the parties, campaigns, and independent groups choose to talk to them. In turn, that could affect the outcome of the election.

According to CIRCLE’s exclusive analysis, released today, Mitt Romney has caught up with Ron Paul in the total number of youth votes in the primaries and caucuses. Santorum and Gingrich lag far behind. Meanwhile, to put those trends in perspective, Barack Obama had drawn almost twice as many youth voters as Romney or Paul at this time in the 2008 cycle.

The relatively low youth turnout could be a sign that engagement is down, but I think it’s more likely that (to quote the CIRCLE release), “young people remain largely in the Democratic column today, after supporting Obama by a 68-32% margin in 2008 and then choosing Democratic House candidates over Republicans by a 57-40% margin in 2010.”