Youth vote fuels mass turnout on Election Day

By Staff reports

Thu Nov 06, 2008, 11:12 PM EST

Salem - The shining victory of Election Day 2008 was, far and away, Sen. Barack Obama, the United States’ new president-elect.

Obama’s win was even more substantial in Salem, where unofficial results show that 13,020 residents voted for him and running mate Sen. Joe Biden, twice as many as the 5,593 who cast votes for John McCain and Sarah Palin. No other ticket topped 200 votes in Salem, although the Green Party hit 194 votes with candidates Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez.

But there was another success story on Tuesday: voter turnout. City Clerk Cheryl LaPointe said about 91 percent of the city’s registered voters came to the polls, 19,241 people, which may be a local record and which easily topped the 88 percent from the 2004 presidential election.

So far, the Salem seems to be leading the North Shore in turnout, despite large numbers in surrounding communities. (See a ranking of local turnout at the bottom of this story.) Estimates for the national turnout have also been high, putting the figure at about 65 percent.

The 91 percent Salem turnout becomes even more impressive when considering how many more voters are registered this election. There isn’t an official tally of new voters, but it’s at least 2,400 higher than in 2004.

“In the last month [of registration] there was a huge pull,” said LaPointe, who believes the high-profile presidential campaigns made a big difference, as did the economy.

As a result, there were lines at many polling places in Salem, even at 6:30 a.m. in anticipation of the 7 a.m. polling start. “A lot of people went before work because everyone thought there would be lines after work,” LaPointe said.

Some polling places had lines of 20 to 30 people early in the morning, at lunchtime and in the evening, around the workday. During off hours, sometimes there would be just a few people at the polls and then suddenly the room would fill up.

“There were lulls, but not like there is normally,” said the city clerk, noting this is the first time she’s seen every voting booth full at polling locations.

But the voting process went smoothly, for the most part, with some minor troubles such as traffic flow around Jefferson Avenue.

The youth vote played a major role in the turnout, as it did nationwide. The get-out-the-vote efforts at Salem State College made a significant difference, said LaPointe, and 500 new voters were added just on the last day of registration, Oct. 15.

Eileen McGivney is a campus organizer with MASSPIRG, an activist group that did nonpartisan voter recruitment at Salem State and North Shore Community College. She said they registered 825 new voters at Salem State, compared with the 550 they generated in for the 2004 election.

In Salem’s Ward 7, Precinct 1, which covers three of the SSC dorms, there was an 83 percent turnout this year — compared with a 71 percent turnout in 2004.

McGivney credits the surge in young voters, nationally and locally, on candidates who reached younger voters this election by talking about issues “that really affect young people,” like the economy, college affordability and global warming.

“It engages young people in a way they haven’t been before,” she said.

At 23, McGivney is a young voter herself, but the MASSPIRG venture — which has been in place since the 1980s — focuses on college students. She says the push to register voters gets going in January and peaks in October, since many college students don’t get around to registering until the last minute.

MASSPIRG follows up with a get-out-the-vote effort the week before election, with door-to-door visits inside the dorms and outreach workers setting up outside on campus. Some of the interns who worked with MASSPIRG spent hours encouraging their fellow students to vote, McGivney said, which makes a difference: According to MASSPIRG’s studies, peer input is one of the most effective methods.

There is a final push on Election Day to encourage young voters to hit the polls. On Tuesday there were Obama and McCain cutouts around campus for students to pose with, candidate T-shirts and people wearing masks of the candidates — even one of former candidate Hillary Clinton.

“Just to pump up the visibility factor,” she explained. They also encourage students to text-message their friends to remind them to vote. The idea is to reach young voters in ways to which they’re receptive.

It worked, according to the numbers and to the young faces at the polls. “There was much, much more younger voters,” LaPointe said.

The city of Salem needed more poll workers than ever this year, partly because of the anticipated high turnout and partly due to the issue of partial ballots. A new law allows voters who changed their address during the last 18 months to cast partial ballots at their old polling places.

“I feel bad for every city and town that went through this,” LaPointe said, although she was pleased that it meant so many more people voted.

The partial ballots gave the city trouble during the primary — a curveball, as LaPointe described it — so election workers at City Hall made plans to ease the transition on Tuesday. The election department got help by posting fliers and newspaper advertisements, as well as good old-fashioned word of mouth.

They also found help from the same group that helped elevate voter registration, the city’s young people. City Hall employees trained some Salem State College students as poll volunteers who could assist the poll wardens, and they in turn trained some of their peers.

As for more local candidates, Salem heavily favored incumbents and Democrats, again mirroring state and national results.

U.S. Sen. John Kerry will return to office after easily beat challenging Republican Jeffrey Beatty. His campaign was helped by the 13,485 Salem residents who voted for him, more than twice as many as the 4,589 Salemites who cast votes for Beatty.

North Shore residents of the 6th District returned U.S. Rep. John Tierney, D-Salem, to office for a seventh term. He beat out Republican Richard Baker Jr. of West Newbury by a landslide, and in Salem earned 15,148 to Baker’s 3,344. Tierney celebrated his win with several other local candidates and their Democrat supporters Tuesday night in the Grand Ballroom of the Hawthorne Hotel.

 “I thank the voters of the 6th District for sending me back to Congress,” Tierney said in a statement issued a few hours after polls closed on Tuesday. “I look forward to working with President-elect Obama and my colleagues in the House to take our country in a new direction.  This historic election is to be celebrated, but even as we do that, we recognize the challenges ahead and the need for Americans to join together so this nation can move forward.”

Salem’s delegation on Beacon Hill ran unopposed. State Rep. John Keenan, D-Salem, will return to representing the Seventh Essex District with 14,706 votes from his Salem constituency. State Sen. Frederick Berry, D-Peabody, was returned also to office. Salem voters agreed with the other communities in the Second Essex District, giving 15,100 votes to Berry.

As for ballot questions, Salem mirrored the state results on each of the three issues. The city’s voters opposed the income-tax reduction of Question 1, with 5,411 voting yes and 13,251 voting no. Salem approved of the reduced penalties for marijuana possession prescribed by Question 2, voting 12,600 in favor and 6,139 against. Salem voters supported Question 3, with 10,291 voting to ban greyhound racing and 8,333 voting to leave at as-is.

All vote counts are considered unofficial until they have been certified.