Jenny Peek
Maia Berlow (left), an organizer for NextGen Wisconsin, asks UW-Madison students to sign pledges to vote on Nov. 6.
Maia Berlow approaches student after student between Library Mall and University Square, asking them to take a survey.
“Hi, do you have a sec to fill out a super quick survey to promise to vote in November?” Berlow asks on a recent afternoon on the UW-Madison campus.
The “pledge to vote card” includes boxes for people to check the issues that motivate them, including racial equality, immigration and gun safety.
While they fill out the survey Berlow asks the students why they’re excited to vote this November.
Many mention access to affordable health care and education, while others cite climate change, equality and LGBTQ+ issues.
For some the motivation is simple: “Getting the asshole out of office,” quips one student. “Getting Walker out of office,” echoes another.
Berlow uses the conversations to make sure students are registered to vote and have the information they need about how to vote in the Nov. 6 election.
The effort is sponsored by NextGen Wisconsin, the statewide arm of NextGen America, which was founded by liberal activist and billionaire Tom Steyer with the goal to “register, motivate and turn out more than 250,000 young people to vote” across 11 states.
According to George Olufosoye, state youth director for NextGen Wisconsin, there are data that show pledge-to-vote cards are an effective way for young people to get the information that they need in order to turn out. “We’re having intentional conversations, we’re meeting them where they’re at — every day on their college campuses and in the community — and this is all in the effort to make sure that they turn out on Nov. 6.”
As of Oct. 8, NextGen had gathered pledges from more than 45,000 young people in Wisconsin across 26 campuses.
For Berlow, who graduated from Columbia University in May 2018, the youth vote is more important than ever.
She says young people have the power to be the largest eligible voting bloc in the United States — but only if they turn out.
According to a July 2017 Pew Research Center report, the 2016 presidential election marked the first time Millennial and Gen X voters outnumbered Baby Boomers and older voters.
The Pew Research Center writes that the increase is noteworthy because Millennials are “more likely to be self-described independents, but they also are more Democratic than older generations.”
Berlow, along with NextGen, hopes to grasp onto those political leanings to elect progressive candidates into office.
For Wisconsin alone, the goal — beyond getting young people to vote — is to defeat Gov. Scott Walker, re-elect U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, and flip the 1st Congressional District, where Democrat Randy Bryce is running against Republican Bryan Steil.
“When young people vote we can elect leaders who will fight for progressive change,” Berlow says. “It’s that simple: Our vote is connected to our values and the issues that we care about, the issues that impact our lives and our families on a daily basis, and when we turn out to vote, those issues and those values are placed at the forefront of this country’s policies.”
College Republicans of UW-Madison are also hoping to turn out young voters for conservative candidates. Communications director Alesha Guenther says the group is working on registering voters and getting out information about early voting.
“Additionally, our members are volunteering with Republican candidates to make phone calls and knock doors on their behalf,” Guenther writes in an email. “We also are continuing to bring a variety of speakers to campus including candidates like Leah Vukmir and Gov. Scott Walker to give students a chance to hear from the candidate themselves prior to the election.”
Connie Flanagan, a UW-Madison professor and expert on youth and politics, notes that the size and diversity of this generation of young voters is unique.
“This generation is huge, and it’s far more demographically diverse than many of its predecessors,” she says. “So the tolerance of diversity in a lot of dimensions is true in part because they are a diverse generation, and because the issues have been ones they’ve grown up thinking about.”
Flanagan points to the Black Lives Matter movement.
“[Young people] have grown up surrounded by things like Black Lives Matter … the likelihood is that they personally know, or they know of someone who’s been affected by those kinds of things,” referring to police brutality and staggering black imprisonment rates.
Those experiences craft a young person’s worldview and influence their political activity, she says.
“When you know other people who are dealing with issues, those issues become salient to you,” she says, adding, “to the extent that you start to think about your society as an inclusive place, you also are more likely to think of problems in your society as not the fault of individuals.”
Harnessing that thinking and tapping the enthusiasm of youth voters is something Olufosoye hopes encourages a lifetime of political activity.
“This is an effort that is going to be continued,” he says. “We want to make sure that we continue winning and bring the blue wave to the Badger State.”