Voter Engagement

Throughout the north side of Pittsburgh, one of the city's three major Black districts, they lined up before dawn, hundreds deep in the 47-degree weather as if they were waiting for history to be made. Even after the polling places opened into an instant crawl, they kept coming.

And they kept coming all day.  read more »

George Pillsbury, with the Nonprofit Voter Engagement Network, offers a preliminary, yet comprehensive, look at the states and turnout trends. This is a compilation of information from leading sources, like the US Election Project (Michael McDonald), CIRCLE and the major media exit polls.

Voting in western states and southern states was up the most. Due in very significant part to the 3 demographics that added the most voters – Latino, Black and Youth.  read more »

November 4, 2008  read more »

WASHINGTON (AP) — America voted in record numbers, standing in lines that snaked around blocks and in some places in pouring rain. Voters who queued up Tuesday and the millions who balloted early propelled 2008 to what one expert said was the highest turnout in a century.

It looks like 136.6 million Americans will have voted for president this election, based on 88 percent of the country's precincts tallied and projections for absentee ballots, said Michael McDonald of George Mason University. Using his methods, that would give 2008 a 64.1 percent turnout rate.  read more »

About 22-24 Million Young Americans Go to the Polls:
Up by at Least 2.2 Million from 2004

Young voters favor Obama over McCain 66% to 32%; 18% of all voters were young

Conference Call-in Press Briefing to Discuss 2008 Youth Vote, 2 PM ET, Nov. 5
The dial-in number for the call is 877-844-6052 (no access code needed)

Medford/Somerville, MA - Preliminary CIRCLE projections show the turnout for young Americans (ages 18-29) is higher than in 2004, a year of significant increase, and is much higher than it was in 2000 and 1996.  read more »

WASHINGTON, DC-- Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) participated Tuesday in an election that will go down in history with high turnout rates-- especially among minorities, new voters, and young voters. APIAVote partners and coalitions in 14 states turned out thousands of voters yesterday in the efforts to increase civic participation in the fastest growing minority community in the nation.  read more »

I'm not going to lie to you. When Barack Obama first kicked off his campaign less than two years ago I was more than a little skeptical. Like many of my peers from the Millennial Generation, it was hard for me to believe that a man of African decent had a legitimate shot at becoming the President of the United States. I love my country but, after all, the cannons of the US's unique history are filled with tales of racial discrimination and ethnic prejudice.  read more »

Over the weekend the New York Times ran an alarming — and as it turns out flatly untrue — story that blamed Rock the Vote for disenfranchising as many as 100,000 voters in the state.

The story, Voters in Electoral Limbo, opens with a vignette of a alleged victim who registered with the youth voting group, but whose registration was nowhere to be found on the voter rolls.  read more »

The New York City Board of Elections, bracing for heavy turnout in Tuesday’s general election, is trying to avoid a repeat of the chaos that dogged the last presidential election here, when voters waited in line for hours, poll workers were inadequately trained, phone calls went unanswered and the agency’s Web site crashed.  read more »

With the upcoming U.S. elections only 12 days away, Google has released a new web site to help simply and centralize information about voting locations and voter registration. According to a blog post about the new U.S. Voter Info site, Google found it hard to believe that in 2008, this type of important information isn't better organized on the web. Because organizing info is what Google is all about, they took it on themselves to step in where government has not and have created an incredibly useful site for all U.S. citizens.

The U.S. Voter Site  read more »