New Voters and the Youth Vote

The above column by Arrianna Huffington is a good look at the youth vote, by I do think she is being a little too optimistic and/or naive. The thing is, every four years, both parties play lip service to the youth vote, there are tons of get-out-the-vote drives, and MTV and P.Diddy register a bunch of young voters. Every 4 years. And every time, the result is the same- the young voters don't show up to the polls. It's sad, but true.

As far as the record numbers of newly registered voters go, I think that will be a different story, and a good one for Kerry. I simply cannot believe that people are getting involved for the first time to vote for the status quo. And the funny thing is, all these new voters are not counted at all in the polls. So when you read "Bush ahead by 5 points", you know it's just bullshit. I think that if even half of the newly registered voters show up to the polls on election day, Kerry wins by a substantial margin. I really hope that happens, not because I like Kerry, but I think Bush is a disaster, and I would hate to see a replay of the 2000 election in Florida. It's already been reported that there are election law lawyers from both parties in all of the swing states filing pre-election lawsuits and ready to make challenges after the electionhttp://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/26/voter.worries.ap/index.html. Wouldn't it be great if Kerry won so decisively that there was no point in fighting in the courts?