Thursday, September 16, 2004
'Rock the Vote' concentrates on youngest demographic
By Howard Wilkinson
Enquirer staff writer
EVANSTON - Laura Evans probably didn't expect to make any significant decisions Wednesday afternoon, as she and her friends hustled across the Xavier University campus to get to class. But the 19-year-old from Columbus did just that when she became a registered voter.
![[img]](rock.jpg)
From left, Xavier students Ashley Fleck, Dallas, Texas; Erin
Hennessey, Brunswick, Ohio; and Carrie Bolmeyer, North Royalton, Ohio, register to vote at the
Rock the Vote event at Xavier University Wednesday.
(Enquirer photo/CRAIG RUTTLE)
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"It's something I'd planned to do, but I never got around to it,'' said Evans, a sophomore studying psychology, as she turned in her registration card at Rock the Vote's booth in front of the Cintas Center.
She was exactly the kind of young person that Rock the Vote, a non-partisan registration campaign, has been looking for as its "Campus Invasion'' bus tour makes its way around the country, looking to draw hundreds of thousands of 18- to 30-year-olds into the political process.
Evans, who said she is undecided, walked through the Rock the Vote festival site with a Kerry-Edwards placard under her arm and a Bush-Cheney lapel sticker in her hand.
Rock the Vote set up a small village of booths and a large stage, where rocker Dan Dyer played, and dozens of volunteers thrust clipboards with voter registration cards at students.
"We've registered 800,000 young people so far this year,'' said Lindsey Berman, the bus tour manager. "The response has been tremendous.''
Rock the Vote was founded 14 years ago by people in the recording industry and became part of the political landscape in 1992, when MTV, the cable rock music outlet, became a primary sponsor.
Wednesday's five-hour stop at XU was the fourth on a 24-stop tour of college campuses.
Xavier was not chosen by accident. Many of the "Campus Invasion'' stops are in battleground states, including Ohio, Missouri, Florida and Pennsylvania.
There are nearly 43 million Americans in the 18-30 age group, but fewer than half of them - about 18 million - voted in the 2000 presidential election.
At times Wednesday, the line was longer at the Ben & Jerry's ice cream wagon than it was at the voter registration table, but by day's end, Rock the Vote organizers had registered 230 voters.
Christine Vann, 20, a Kerry supporter from Long Island, transferred her registration for a specific reason.
"John Kerry is going to win New York; we know that already,'' Vann said. "Ohio is still up in the air. My vote is going to count more in Ohio than it would in New York.''
Rock the Vote
