New Voters Project

What's New

Recent congressional scandals demonstrate the role of powerful interests and their lobbyists, as they engage in unseemly practices from accepting gifts and travel junkets to outright bribery.

Overview

NJPIRG Student Chapters’ New Voters Project is a nonpartisan effort to register young people and get them to the polls on Election Day.

We have been doing this work for two reasons. First, we believe democracy is strongest when citizens participate and for too long, young people haven't been full participants. Second, we believe the best way to get political leaders to pay attention to young people and their issues is to demonstrate that young people are a viable constituency that can be mobilized using tried and true techniques.

It’s working. Something big is happening in our democracy—young people are voting. For the past three elections, we’ve turned out in big numbers. The evidence also shows that when politicians talk to young people, we will vote even more.

Young people are going to vote in 2008. Presidential candidates will be well served by targeting young people. Not just with big smiles and empty rhetoric, but with substance, engaging us in conversations about the issues we care about. Issues like global warming, college affordability, health care and financial security.

Because voting at a young age promotes a lifelong habit of civic engagement, the New Voters Project works to increase voter participation among 18- to 24-year-olds. In 2004, youth turnout increased by 11 percent.

News

House Adopts Independent Ethics Oversight 3/11/2008

House Takes Next Step Toward Reform 5/27/2007

Letter to Congress: Count Every Vote Act (S. 804) 3/28/2007

Newsroom

Results

2006 Elections

In fall 2006, NJPIRG Student Chapters’ New Voters Project worked on 7 college campuses to boost voter turnout. We forged alliances with student governments, administrators, faculty and student groups and recruited over 400 students to lead the registration campaign or volunteer on their campus. Our hardworking coalition partners and student leaders registered 3,500 students to vote. Leading up to Election Day, we made more than 5,000 personalized Get Out the Vote reminders either over the phone or face-to-face.

The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) measured the turnout increase between 2002 and 2006 in student-dense precincts where we and other partners focused our efforts. The analysis focused on a set of 36 precincts in Ohio, Connecticut, Iowa, Colorado and Michigan and found that average turnout in those precincts increased by 157 percent over 2002. Nationally, the increase in youth voter turnout was four times the rate of the general population’s increase (4 percent for youth, 1 percent overall).

2005 Elections

The New Voters Project focused on youth voter registration and turnout in eight states in 2005. New Jersey’s gubernatorial elections was one of the priority states. NJPIRG Student Chapters registered 5,000 voters on 11 college campuses, and contacted 16,000 voters leading up to election day.

An analysis of raw data by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) at the University of Maryland looked at turnout in New Jersey and Virginia, the two states with major off-year elections. Their study indicates that young people voted in bigger numbers in the gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia in 2005 than they did in 2001. In New Jersey, the number of votes cast in youth-dominated precincts was 19.9 percent higher than 2001.

2004 Elections

In 2004, the New Voters Project succeeded in becoming the largest grassroots youth voter mobilization effort in this country's history. We registered over 500,000 18- to-24-year-olds to vote, and contacted more than 500,000 young registered voters during the get-out-the-vote phase of the campaign.

Our work helped stop the decline in youth voter turnout. Surveys show that youth turnout increased to 47 percent—an eleven percentage point increase over 2000—with an astonishing 11.5 million 18- to-24-year-olds casting ballots.

ISSUES