Youth Power at the Polls

...Further, the organization plans to work with, among others, the League of Women Voters and the Youth Citizenship Fund to reform election procedures...

...Frontlash also registered enough of Wyoming's low-income Spanish-speaking voters to provide the margin of victory for Teno Roncalio, a liberal running for the state's only congressional seat...

...But skeptics point out that in three states where 18-20-year-olds have been permitted to vote, only about 30 per cent ever cast their ballots...

...The mystique of youth politics was convincingly dispelled last November...

...Other projects were carried out in Tennessee, New Jersey, Vermont, and Illinois...

...The Movement for a New Congress (MNC), founded at Princeton University in the heat of the May protests, had predicted that hundreds of thousands of students would be working to elect peace candidates...

...Originating with Eugene McCarthy's "children's crusade" of 1968, this form of politics has attracted few adherents from the working class or poor...

...Most of them are much too satisfied with it as it is...

...In 777e Real Majority, for example, Richard M. Scammon and Benjamin J. Watten-berg argue that had 18-20-year-olds been able to vote in the '68 Presidential election, and had they voted like those in their early 20s, the outcome would not have changed in a single state...

...Founded in 1968 by the United States Youth Council, Frontlash undertook its first assignment in cooperation with the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education (cope...

...What does all this mean now that young people have the vote...

...Kemble continued, Frontlash hopes to concentrate on bringing young people of every social and economic division into the political process...

...Carl Gershman, a frequent contributor here, is a young observer of the national political scene...

...Moreover, it is noted, young people who do go to the polls tend to follow the pattern set by their parents...

...Most liberal politicians avoided close identification with their narrowly based and often unpopular "youth" constituencies, and the students who had so vigorously opposed the invasion of Cambodia in May seemed to have little passion left for the campaigns in the fall...

...Essentially it would seem to suggest that, like all other groups of voters, if they are to become an effective political force they need to be efficiently mobilized and highly motivated...

...In its most successful effort last November, Frontlash registered almost 100,000 people in California's minority and working-class precincts...

...It intends to work through strongly rooted community organizations to establish permanent registration structures...

...But to judge from the Frontlash experience, the young apparently realize that broadening the base of political participation offers the chance of making government more responsive to society's needs...

...The skeptics are probably right in maintaining that the Supreme Court's historic decision expanding the Federal electorate is not about to set off a revolution...

...per new voter...

...This year and next, Mrs...

...By 1970 it had some 10,000 young volunteers in the field to conduct voter participation drives in 10 states...

...Like all samplings, the Harris survey presents a somewhat simplified picture of today's youth...

...In the Mexican-American communities of San Antonio, Corpus Christi and El Paso, Frontlash volunteers registered 36,000 new voters...

...Life concluded: "People who expect a cataclysmic rejection of traditions, mores and institutions are in for a shock: the young wouldn't overturn society if they could...

...In all, Frontlash registered 180,000 people, at the remarkably low cost of $60,000--about 33...

...And their approach could in time have revolutionary effects...

...But the prediction proved wildly optimistic (even at Princeton the MNC was able to muster only about 200 volunteers), despite the fact that many campuses observed the "Princeton Plan," a two-week recess preceding the elections...

...Charlotte Roe Kemble, Executive Director of Frontlash, offers this analysis of the program's success: "Voter registration is considered a tedious, low-level job that most campaign workers will not undertake unless they are paid...

...Working in five key states before the Presidential election, its organizers registered 25,000 low-income voters...

...We showed them how registration laws operate to exclude poor and working-class people, how increased voter registration and participation can make poor people a force in politics, and how such efforts can help build alliances that would make it possible to challenge the power of the conservatives...

...Through Frontlash, we were able to inspire a large, active volunteer force by making students aware that they could do more than help elect candidates...

...One group preparing to take on the task is Frontlash, a nonpartisan liberal youth organization concerned with voter registration and education...

...FRONTLASH LOOKS TO '72 Youth Power at the Polls BY CARL GERSHMAN Will youth influence the course of American politics now that it is able to carry its views into the polling booth...

...It is a job, moreover, requiring vision no less than stamina...

...A recent survey of youth opinions conducted by Louis Harris Associates for Life found that 59 per cent of Americans aged 15-21 consider themselves conservative or middle-of-the-road, 23 per cent say they are liberal, while only 5 per cent call themselves radical...

...Indeed, in an effort to obscure the gap that exists within the younger generation itself, many liberal popularizers of a homogeneous youth nation have referred to the young people who voted for George Wallace in 1968 as "workers"--Unwittingly revealing as well, in this context, a clear antiworking-class bias...

...No one disputes the size of the newly enfranchised Federal constituency: By 1972 approximately 11.5 million Americans--more than 8 per cent of the total electorate--will be between the ages of 18 and 20...

...To reach the nonstudent, Frontlash will cooperate with labor political education groups like cope, and will encourage the military to provide voting information and absentee ballots to servicemen...

...That fundamental social reality has been buried in all the talk about the generation gap and its related phenomenon, "youth politics...

...And that would appear to apply--especially among the disadvantaged--to the vital first step in the whole process, registration...

...Yet it does bring out the important fact that the young, while sharing certain distinguishing features, are not a monolithic subculture but a highly diversified group, reflecting all the class, racial, ethnic, and geographic divisions of the society at large...

...Once they understood the gut issues, it was believed, these people would help counter the Right-wing backlash among blue-collar workers...

...In Utah, besides enrolling 10,-000 low-income voters and conducting a massive telephone canvass to reach people with Spanish surnames, volunteers helped organize a 50^-a-plate "people's banquet" attended by 1,500 workers and students, held the night of a $100-a-plate dinner for Vice President Agnew...

...Guided by the coalition philosophy articulated most forcefully by civil rights leader Bayard Rustin (who is an adviser), the group's organizers set out to register poor and working-class citizens, millions of whom have in effect been disenfranchised by restrictive registration and voting requirements...

...on election day alone, 3,000 volunteers were mobilized to get out the vote...

...Media-generated misconceptions about the country's political and cultural generation gap notwithstanding, other studies tend to support that view...

...It will also propose that registration programs be funded by universities as part of their normal student enrollment procedures, and that voter education become part of the regular high-school civics syllabus...

...There were five upsets in State Assembly races and two in the State Senate--enabling the liberals to gain control of both houses of the State Legislature...

...The job to be done is enormous, for the established organizations have too long avoided any serious effort to involve the poor or working class in the political process, and now there are the newly enfranchised young to register as well...