11-5-12: Getting Out the Youth Vote

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MICA-1105.mp3

With about 20 hours to go before polls open tomorrow, even with last week’s storm knocking out two days, more Marylanders have voted early in this election cycle than ever before. Nationally, voter turnout in 2008 was the highest in any presidential election since 1960, but even then, about 75 million eligible citizens did not vote.

Two students at the Maryland Institute College of Art here in Baltimore are particularly concerned about the number of their fellow college students who do not plan to vote, and they have turned that concern into a voter drive called “Don’t You Want To?” 

Jianna Lieberman and Aviva Paley have spent the last several months trying to persuade kids at MICA and around the country to be informed about issues and candidates, and to exercise their precious right at the ballot box. Today, they tell Tom Hall about their campaign to get college students to the polls, and they discuss apathy, misinformation, disillusionment, and other sources of low turnout.