So if there are any Republicans out there complaining why the youth and minorities tend to vote Democrat, they need to look no further than Nevada Assembly Minority Leader Pat Hickey (R). In an interview with a conservative Radio host Pat Hickey said:
This is a great year in an off presidential election. No, seemingly no Democrat on the top of the ticket against Sandoval. No Harry Reid. Probably where we had a million voters turn out in 2012 we’ll have like 700,000. A lot of minorities, a lot of younger people will not turn out in an non-presidential year. It’s a great year for Republicans.
Listen Here:
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/112445646″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
We can talk about voter suppression all day, but there are other reasons why the youth don’t come out to vote during non-presidential years. Turn on the TV and watch a few political ads (I know most of you would rather not). But, the ads are often targeting people of a certain age. When people make the effort to reach out to voters on their own level of understanding, those demographics will show up to vote.
This last week, the youth based group Generation Opportunity launched a campaign telling young people to opt out of Obamacare. It depicted a creepy Uncle Sam about to give prostate and vaginal exams to college age students. While this was a very misleading ad, it was incredibly funny and people paid attention. If politicians did more ads that targeted young people there would be a higher turnout of the youth in a non-presidential year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7cRsfW0Jv8
So Minority Leader Pat Hickey, how about you put your platform in a format that targets youth and people of color and let them decide what is best for them. Or you can keep making statements that exclude and alienate these groups and put that last nail in your party’s platform… you know, its whatever.
Edited/Published by: SB
