Show Voter Doter Registration Drives Go Tech High-Tech and Roots Grass-Roots I Kate Linthicum f Los Angeles Times j With less than a week to sign up voters in many states registration groups have revved up their efforts to target young people where they live on their cell phones their computers and video games Rock the Vote the nations nation's largest youth registration group recently launched a feature on Microsoft's that allows garners gamers to request voter applications from their handset The country's four largest nonpartisan voter registration groups have joined forces with to launch The Ultimate College Bowl an online registration application that can be added to almost any Web site Whoever signs up the most new voters will win a private concert for their school by the band Death Cab for Cutie Cutic Its It's the future of voter registration and its it's working Registration among voters younger than 30 has soared Heather Smith executive director of Rock the Vote said her organization had registered 23 million voters in the past 15 months and expected to reach 25 million That's more than twice as many people as the organization registered in 2004 Its certainly enough people to make the difference this November Smith said The number of young people going to the polls has increased in recent years Turnout among people younger than 30 rose by 9 percent between 2000 and 2004 according to US U.S. Census data more than double the increase of any other age group Nelson Chen a student at the University of Southern California is one of thousands of young volunteers trying to make sure that trend continues Wednesday that meant waking up at am a.m. and donning a bright yellow Student Vote com T Chen who serves as chairman of his schools school's chapter of the Student Public Interest Research Group the oldest and largest effort to mobilize college voters joined a handful of volunteers in fanning out across campus scrawling the Web address on chalkboards in dozens of classrooms and convening on the quad to set up for the days day's Text Out the Vote i event It worked like this A volunteer would ask a passing student to send a text message to to a number that sends a return message with instructions on how to register Then the volunteer asked the student to forward the instructions to friends Within minutes one volunteer could spread the message to dozens of people Its a whole lot less effort from us Chen said One of the people Chen stopped was Jonathan Goldford a business major One reason a lot of young people arent aren't registering is because its it's not too I easy Goldford said after he sent to his the text message friends This is so easy you just forward it Sujatha national program director for the Student New Voters Project said young people are more likely to register when they're asked to do so so by a friend Its not like a stranger telling someone to vote its it's their friend said We Ve think that tec technology can put roots grass-roots organizing on steroids j |