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Show Most youth liberal, but... students), nearly fell apart. Blacks walked out. Radicals issued demands. And moderate students threatened to split the group further by endorsing a specific candidate. Currently, the Youth Caucus, a remnant of the Loyola conference, con-ference, is working to get liberal youth elected as delegates to the Democratic National Convention. But Duane. Draper, who chaired the Emergency Conference organizing committee, says holding young delegates together as a bloc at the convention may be impossible. "An awful lot of the young people being elected aren't students," Draper says. "And they're not all peace freaks. You've got a bunch of party workers. . These young delegates have their political futures to think about. No youth organization at the convention is get students to the , office. If the local very imaginative, ,he 2 The other two Eroim 4" Citi2enship FuncT Frontlash, have hp successful -probably u they have used more f Se organizing tactics Both?1 concentrated on ir?? hav workers, who seem tc nize than col,ege JJ YCF recruits local including everything iZ7r! Republicans and Cam to bloc associations and gangs-to man its u ett d-es. To build registering, YCF often attempts o create some controversy-,!: built on a charge that t l registrars are hindering th registration process. Frontlash, ' which bv U, By SUZANNE DEAN Special fo the Chronicle Phil Seib, an assistant to Democratic National Committee chairman Lawrence O'Brien, has every reason to be happy this year. Twenty-five million 18-24-year-olds will have their first chance at the ballot box, and polls show the young people are not only more liberal than their parents but are registering Democratic by nearly a three-to-one margin. But Seib is cautious. "I can't really figure out who we can expect at the polls," he says. "It's relatively simple to reach students they're all congregated on campus. But I'm wondering about the nebulous millions who aren't in school the workers and the 20-year-old housewives. "We should come out of it with a couple of million votes clear," he adds. "But it depends on where J they come. If they come in California or in Texas, we could win in spite of ourselves. But considering the independent nature of the young voters, I'd say "An awful lot of the young people being elected aren't students. And they're not all peace freaks." November had directly registered 300,000 working class youth has an advantage because it is tied in with the AFL-CIO. In Chicago, office space and telephones were provided by the steelworkers. In Michigan, the United Federation of Teachers ran a high school program. And in San Diego, local unions auctioned auc-tioned off a Ford Pinto to raise interest and money for a drive Currently, the AFL-CIO's Committee Com-mittee on Political Action (COPE is compiling a postcard census in which union members across the country are being asked to list children eligible to vote for the first time. Frontlash plans to follow up on the replies. But both YCF and Frontlash have encountered failure. "Convincing young people of the efficacy of registering and voting has been a discouraging process," muses YCF staff member, Carroll Ladt. Young people proved during the anti-war era that, given a strong enough issue, they could create a national movement. "But during the sixties," says, Edward Schwartz, a former president of the National Student Association, "there was a theory1 that young people alone could: achieve social change. The press contributed to this view i Columnists and pundits wrole,i 'this marvelous new generation is . the hope of us all.' And the youth; movement itself quickly came to believe it." . i a lot depends on who we have as a candidate." Seib's position represents a midpoint between the optimistic view that the 26th amendment lowering the voting age to 18 will immediately change election outcomes and the pessimistic idea that the amendment "won't make a dime's worth of difference." dif-ference." But Seib's view is probably as close to reality as political observers ob-servers will come until youth reaction is actually tested at the polls. Meanwhile, one thing is clear: Youth in general, and college students particularly, do not view themselves as a voting bloc. One of the first to learn this has been the perennial youth organizer, Allard K. Lowenstein. Lowenstein throught passage of the 26th amendment would provide the perfect chance to get young people together on a program to "dump the President and stop the war." After organizing a series of "Registration Summer" rallies at which young people soaked up political advice from speakers such as Reps. Bella Abzug, Pete McCloskey andShirley Chisholm, Lowenstein arranged to have the Association of Student Governments Govern-ments (ASC) call an "Emergency Conference of Young Voters" at Loyola University near Chicago. The conference, attended by 2,000 noisy youth (mostly college i going to outweigh their commitments com-mitments to the people in their home slates." Republicans, too, are hoping to give their party an image of youth and vigor by bringing under-30 delegates to their convention. (The first young COP delegates elected was a black coed who is a College Republican officer in Ohio.) Three national groups have tried to organize youth voter registration drives, often using "youth issues" such as the Vietnam war and legalization of marijuana as their drawing cards. All have met with marginal success. "We're just not there yet. We haven't created a college registration movement," admits John Tetrault, a regional director for National Movement for the Student Vote, which several months ago shortened its title to simply, "Student Vote." Student Vote was founded a year ago by two Harvard students who set out to organize registration drives on 304 campuses where 60 percent of the nation's students are located. "Our attempts at bussing students to registration offices have been a failure," says Tetrault. "If the registration agent won't come on campus (in many states, laws prohibit mobile registrars). . you leave it up to the local people to get a rock group or come up with some other imaginative way to The Kent State tragedy, along) with the realization that their movement did not actually end the Vietnamese war, seemed to jolt the eager young who had grown up feeling they had all tne ; answers. Not only did Kent State ' result in a toning-down of campus radicalism, it also seemed to create suspicion of all en masse political activity. "No drive came and got me to register. I did it on my Brent Schillinger, a freshman from Cornwall, N Y. says pro Schillinger is like most coll registrants: he is taking his w political step quietly and dependently. Only 26 percent of the new voters are students. The rest are wo to servicemen and housew Most political analysts M that, as University ot sylvania political saen M. Seagull puts it, "student form no blocs ',lation segments which are g' act different politically." believe non-students are Conservative and will more 2 folio" their parents' views. rollege students, whose 5ul are often Republican, ? to be ignoring parental Jences and registering as dependents. u,.s more, college students " Lir non-student peers seem fie concerned about different , Students, since the general Jngdown of the Vietnam "& 8are concerned about lgy, urban problems, honesty Smentand the "quality of The non-students are led by more immediate con-erns: con-erns: economics, crime and bus- i," the youth vote is not a bloc (0te will young voters merely cancel each other out? With non-(udents non-(udents greatly outnumbering ;tudets, won't the group of (0ung voters most likely follow their parents' habits carry the day? Perhaps not, says Prof. Seagull, ,ko notes that the most significant variation between students and non-students is simply that non-students are less likely to vote. Gallup polls show that while 79 percent of college students expect ex-pect to register, only 59 percent of the non-students say they will enroll. And early registration results reveal an even wider gap. But, while they might tend to vote pre often, college students face jo obstacle which, this year at least, might diminish their par- licipation. fantastic when you consider that registration started at ground The number of new voters will be one of two important variables determining what impact the 26th amendment will have in 1972 The other variable will be the percentage by which the Democratic presidential candidate can-didate carries the youth vote (Most analysts concede at least a majority to the Democrats.) A "Newsweek" study found that if young people had been enfranchised en-franchised in 1968 and had voted 60 percent for Humphrey, it's likely only one state-Misso'uri-would have changed hands. Humphrey would have won a plurality, but Mr. Nixon still would have achieved a resounding electoral victory. But a separate study, compiled by a Lowenstein aide, Kate Bernstein, Bern-stein, found that if 50 percent of the youth had voted, and if Humphrey had received 66 percent of their votes, nine Nixon states would have gone to the Democrats. Among them would have been four large and significant states: California, Ohio, Illinois and New Jersey. Mr.' Nixon would have lost the election. Whatever happens in 1972, people who study political trends agree that the real impact of the youth vote may not be felt for several years. In the first place, remaining segments of the post-war baby boom have yet to move into the electorate. More than 16 million persons will reach voting age between 1972 and 1976, and The barrier is a legal one: most students do not meet residency requirements in the towns where they attend college and must go through extra procedures to register and vote absentee. For instance, at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, county clerk Dennis Bing insisted on a driver's license, a 12-month apartment lease and answers to questions such as, "Where do you jo to church?" and "Where do you plan to be buried?" before registering students. By the time a court ordered Bing tosimplify his procedures, just 15 days remained to register for the ch 21 presidential primary. Students lined up outside the writ's door. About 300 were Pressed during a day, but many e still in line when Bing Wed up each afternoon at 4:30. Ultimately, state officials and n presidential candidates Wthestudents'sideinthe fray W not before two students were 'e when they refused to J to clerk's office at closing J the legal problems the ng and the h found among non-Gallup non-Gallup predicts that 42 J the 25 million eligible l0M8 People will vote. Jjrch is that it will be ;f sSeib. "I'd say 53 or l-Md that's really another 18 million between 1976 and 1980. It will be at that point that the electorate will truly take one a new look: one of every three voters will have come on the scene since passage of the 26th amendment. Political analyst Seagull believes that the impact of these mostly under-30 voters will depend on whether they "reflect no more than the traditional outlook of youth" or whether they respond "as a political generation." "The young voters of the 1930s voted Democratic more than older voters did, and more importantly, im-portantly, retained this Democratic identification and loyalty down through the present," Seagull says. "It is likely that the disproportionate dispropor-tionate effect of the Vietnam war on the lives and consciousness of contemporary youth will produce another political generation." Seagull says that the behavior of such a political generation won't be manifest in partisan terms this time. But, he says, whatever patterns the younger political generation does establish will "tend to persist." A factor encouraging youth to respond as a political generation may well be the politicians, who will probably perceive young voters as a unified bloc with common interests. |