Young Women Don't Vote, Panel Says

In some ways Alexandra Kerry, Cate Edwards, and Rebecca Lieberman are just like other women their age: they're intelligent, well-dressed, and technologically savvy. But in one way, they're part of a very small, select group: they vote.

While the current generation of young women aged 18 to 30 are more civically engaged than ever before, they are voting at the lowest rate in the history of women's suffrage, according to voting experts and candidate daughters at a panel discussion at Casa Italiana.

"No one is keeping us from voting, but shockingly, no one has to," said Cindi Leive, the editor-in-chief of Glamour magazine. "Why are we handing over the most crucial right we have?"

Leive and other editors at Glamour magazine, which hosted the panel, were "shocked" by the results of a recent Pew Charitable Trust foundation study at Rutgers University. Women under 30--a group of 22 million potential voters, who constitute about eight percent of the total population--were the least likely voters of any demographic group, with only one in five likely to cast a vote in the 2004 election.

Cokie Roberts, a political commentator for ABC News and the daughter of two members of Congress, moderated the panel. "Barriers are not the real problem," she said, echoing a key theme of the afternoon. "The real problem is cultural."

Several speakers agreed that voting needs to become friendlier to young women through technology and by raising issues relevant to women, like security, health care, and jobs.

"To attract her politically, first you have to understand her culturally," said Kellyanne Conway, a former Republican pollster and president of the Polling Company.

"I agree that there are perceived barriers to voting," she said. "Technology is a native tongue to this generation of young women. We need to invest in better voting methods."

Yet some panelists disagreed that technology was a factor.

Despite former Vermont Governor Howard Dean's impressive support through the World Wide Web, "the thing that didn't seem to happen was that translating to votes," said Alexandra Kerry, one of two daughters of Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) on the panel.

Others said that America's distant leadership and political system alienate otherwise engaged young women, citing statistics that college-age women are more likely to participate in school activities but much less likely to vote.

"I think the reason that doesn't translate into votes is because ... they don't trust their politicians, and that's especially a problem with the Bush administration," said Cate Edwards, the daughter of Senator John Edwards (D-N.C.) and a senior at Princeton.

"I think a change in leadership is needed," she added.

An article appearing in the April edition of Glamour, "The High Heel Vote," will launch a campaign to educate women about their rights and the potential political power at their disposal.

"We learned to our horror that young women--particularly single women--aren't voting," Ellen Kampinsky, senior editor at Glamour, said.

In partnership with Rock the Vote, Glamour will sponsor a Web site forwomen to fill out voter registration forms.

Young women, once a reliable voting bloc for the Democratic Party, are now a politically amorphous group. While 54 percent of women cast votes for Al Gore in 2000, race and age were the major factor. Ninety-four percent of African American women and more than half of senior citizen-age women voted Gore.

Women under thirty are generally socially liberal, supporting abortion and gay marriage rights, but also tend to lean conservative on issues like taxes and public school privatization.

"The gender gap is closing," said Liz Cheney, daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Nadia Surapanpong, a marketing consultant who said she voted in the last election, was slightly disappointed with the event.

"No one seemed to be specific about how they were going to get out the vote," she said.