Election Anguish

Where will you be four years from now? If you just started college, you will be graduating soon, looking for a job and probably supporting yourself without any help from your parents. What about in eight years from now? You will be 26-years-old, maybe looking to settle down if you haven't already, getting married and starting a family. The way you live and all of the decisions you will have to make in your life will be affected by who the President of our country is. In the past, young people's political voices have not been considered important and we are a demographic that is often overlooked.But now in this upcoming election, our opinions are valued more than ever and a few nonpartisan, nonprofit organizations believe that America's youth will be the deciding factor this year. YOU should be a part of this decision.

Rock The Vote

Blending young people, politics and pop culture, this organization was founded nearly 20 years ago in response to a wave of attacks on freedom of speech and artistic expression. Now Rock the Vote (RTV) works with artists ranging from Snoop Dogg to Sheryl Crow using new technologies to register young people to vote and get them involved in the political movement and the issues that affect their lives.

"Eighteen years ago when we were founded we were getting people to register through 1-800 numbers," said RTV spokeswoman Stephanie Young. "Now we're on Facebook, we're on MySpace, we're on lots of different organizations' websites, we have a mobile program where we are texting. Technology is a huge part of our outreach and its definitely changed the ways we talk and communicate with young people over the years."

Not only is RTV reaching you on the Internet and your cell phones, they are on the streets and college campuses bringing everything straight to the young people. On Sept. 13 they kicked off their mobile road show "Road Trip," featuring concerts by RTV artists as well as voter registration and education. They also have "Rush the Vote," where sororities and fraternities nationwide compete to register the most voters on at their university. And even if you are not in the Greek system, RTV and Declare Yourself teamed up with MySpace to bring you the "Ultimate College Bowl" where colleges compete against each other for the most voter registrations to win a Death Cab for Cutie concert at the winning campus, as well as scholarship money, Guitar Hero 2 or a trip to Philadelphia. With all these engagement efforts and incentives, RTV has registered more than 1 million young voters and counting.

"Rock the Vote's target is 18 to 29-years-old, and we definitely feel this demographic has been left out in this country, politicians have usually ignored us, media definitely ignores us," Young explains. "It's basically that we haven't been represented and Rock the Vote very much wants to be a representative for young people in this country because their voices should be important and they should be heard."

Check out www.rockthevote.com for more information

Declare Yourself

Beginning in 2003, this organization works to empower and encourage every eligible 18-year-old to register and vote in our nation's primaries and elections. More than just getting young voters to vote, Declare Yourself (DY) wants voters to find their reasons to vote and is trying to reach their goal this year of registering over 2 million people.

"All of our targeted efforts bank on the engagement of young people. It's being on Facebook and having those ground-level fan core, street team, website and our blog and all of the social networking we do and everything we do on the ground is meant to kind of engage people. Not just to register them to vote, but to get them involved on another level because that's the whole point," Diana Nguyen, associate director of DY, said. "Declare Yourself at our core is based on the Declaration of Independence and it's about seeing it as an evolving document and getting engaged and being a patriot."

Teaming up with everyone from Yahoo! to Google and MySpace to American Eagle Outfitters, Declare Yourself works with top celebrities and figures in the entertainment and sports industries to promote youth voting. Actresses America Ferrera and Hayden Panettiere are two of their official spokespeople, they have a long laundry list of celebs that are "Friends of the Project," they have had a special "The Hills" episode and many famous people also grace their PSAs, most recently the provocative Jessica Alba campaign.

"She [Jessica Alba] actually came to us on her own accord, it wasn't like her publicist called us or anything. It was really like she is so involved in this election and she cares really deeply and she basically wanted to do anything," Nguyen explains. "That was such an incredible and difficult shoot, it wasn't sexy at all, it was really intense she went to this really deep emotional vulnerable place to convey the emotion of being silenced and she just happened to be in black tape."

With controversial print campaigns gracing our magazines and partnering with Internet companies that we use every single day, Declare Yourself has covered all its bases and is reaching out to all types of niche groups to get young people's involvement and are making sure they are not leaving anyone out.

"This election is going to be decided by young people. I definitely think that any hesitance to think that young people aren't going to show up on election day or before election day, voting early or absentee, people are going to be eating a lot of crow, its' just wrong," Nguyen said. "This generation is so deeply engaged and it's transferable. Politics is so heavy in social networking and it's so in the mix on celebrity blogs, it's on the tips of celebrity tongues, it's on the minds of young bloggers and young writers and everyone."

Log on to www.declareyourself.com to get involved.