Students join rally to get out the vote

Students from three Tallahassee area colleges march to the old Capitol in an event organized by two lawmakers.

By SHELBY OPPEL

© St. Petersburg Times, published November 1, 2000

TALLAHASSEE -- You can't tell it from the campaign ads showing white-haired actors struggling with prescription bottles, but almost 20 percent of Floridians of voting age are not senior citizens -- not by a long shot.

About 18.9 percent, or 2.3-million, are between 18 and 29 years old, according to projections by the state Office of Economic and Demographic Research. On Tuesday, about 400 of them converged on the state Capitol to demand attention.

Shouting "Fired up! Ready to vote," students from Florida A&M University, Florida State University and Tallahassee Community College marched from their campuses to the old Capitol to encourage peers to vote Nov. 7, or earlier by absentee ballot.

"We can make a real big impact on the vote, and that's what most of the candidates don't realize," said Shatoya Howard, 19, a FAMU freshman from Palm Beach wearing a T-shirt that read "When students vote, Democrats win."

Even amid the sea of blue signs for the Democratic Al Gore-Joe Lieberman presidential ticket, organizers nonetheless stressed that the event was non-partisan. A small contingent from the FSU chapter of College Republicans did attend, waving signs for GOP candidate George W. Bush and running mate Dick Cheney, and sporting "Noles for Bush" stickers.

The march, however, was cosponsored by the NAACP and Arrive with Five, a voter turnout effort conceived by two Democratic lawmakers best known for their opposition to Republican Gov. Jeb Bush's One Florida plan to overhaul affirmative action.

Rep. Tony Hill of Jacksonville and Sen. Kendrick Meek of Miami drew light applause from the crowd, made up mostly of African-American students from FAMU.

"We told them in March, we'd remember in November. It's November," said Hill, referring to the March 7 march against One Florida that drew more than 10,000 supporters to Tallahassee.

But the students seemed as motivated by the chance to be heard at the polls as by anger over One Florida, which ended race-based admissions at the state's 10 public universities.

Turnout among young voters has steadily declined since 1972, when 18-year-olds were first given the right to vote, according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. According to a nationwide survey by the center in June, young Americans today are "more cynical and disconnected from politics than even in the recent past."

The survey found only 55 percent of respondents ages 18 to 29 were registered, compared with 87 percent of those 50 and older. Barely half, 54 percent, of those 18 to 29 said they planned to vote Nov. 7, compared with 80 percent of those 50 and older.

Chris Byrd, an FSU sophomore and member of the campus College Republicans, doesn't fit the portrait of the apathetic young voter. He can recite from memory Bush's proposals for cutting taxes and revamping Social Security.

In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted among likely Florida voters last week, Gore led Bush by 9 percentage points among voters 18 to 29. Among all respondents, Gore led Bush by 4 percentage points, within the margin of error.

The race will remain tight, but Bush "will pull it out," said Byrd, 19. It didn't matter to him that most of the student marchers planned to vote for Gore.

"It shouldn't matter what group you join," he said. "It's just that you get out and get involved."

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