For Immediate Release: January 3, 2008

Contact: Sujatha Jahagirdar 323-309-6120

Students to Bring Young Voter Concerns Directly to Candidates

Despite winter break hurdle, youth leaders work to ensure high young voter turnout

Undeterred by the hurdle posed by winter break to getting out the student vote, student organizers from New Hampshire PIRG and sister organizations across the Northeast are determined to replicate their Iowa success. Key to this strategy is to ensure that the presidential candidates are directly engaging young people in the issues they care about.

“It might be winter break,” said Cassie Schultz, a college sophomore from Litchfield, New Hampshire.  “But youth vote organizers are working overtime.”  Schultz is a student leader with New Hampshire PIRGs’ What’s Your Plan? campaign, an effort to convince the presidential candidates to engage young people directly in the issues they care about.  Appearing at candidate fundraisers and photo-ops in New Hampshire and across the country, more than 400 student volunteers have asked all the major candidates their plans on youth issues like global warming and college affordability more than 100 times.

Organizers believe the campaign was key to the high turnout of young voters in Iowa.  “Young people feel ignored by politicians.   This is a chief reason why their turnout is lower,” said Brantley Hawkins, a college sophomore and student leader with the campaign.  “By showing up at events where we are often the only people under 50, we showed the candidates that young people are a force to reckoned with and got them to talk about our issues. Politicians who don’t pay any attention to young people actually started engaging us on critical youth issues like college affordability and global warming.  And what do you know – on Election Day we showed up.”

Student leaders with New Hampshire PIRG and sister chapters across the Northeast will appear at several events on Monday and Tuesday to ask the candidates about issues important to young people. What’s Your Plan? they will ask. To stop global warming. To make a college education affordable.  To provide effective, affordable healthcare.  To ensure financial security for all Americans.

Below is a schedule of ‘Candidate Trail Events’ and partial list of NHPIRG spokespeople who will be on call for insight into the New Hampshire youth vote.

Schedule of January 7 What’s Your Plan? Candidate Trail Events

Student youth vote organizers will appear at several events throughout the day to ask the presidential candidates directly – What’s Your Plan? to address youth issues such as global warming and college affordability.

Who: Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR)
When: 12:00 pm
Where: 132 North Main Street, Concord

Who: Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA)
When: 6:20 pm
Where: McKelvie Middle School, 108 Liberty Hill Road, Bedford

Who: Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL)
When: 8:00 pm
Where: City Hall Plaza, Elm St., Manchester

New Hampshire PIRG’s New Voters Project Spokespeople

Ellynne Bannon is the Director of NHPIRG’s and the Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project. For more than ten years, Ms. Bannon has been organizing on youth issues, mobilizing young people to vote, and training the next generation of social change leaders. Prior to becoming the director in 2007, Ms. Bannon was the chief advisor to the U.S. House of Representatives Education and Labor Committee on higher education and national service issues. She also served as the Youth Vote Coalition’s Chair of the Board of Directors.

Sujatha Jahagirdar is the Program Director of NHPIRG’s and the Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project. Prior to this position, Ms. Jahagirdar served as Clean Water Advocate for Environment California, a statewide environmental organization. Prior to working with Environment California, Ms. Jahagirdar coordinated the CALPIRG Student Chapters’ Water Watch Community Organizing Program. Ms. Jahagirdar graduated with distinction from Yale University with a Bachelor of Science.

Cassie Schultz is a 19-year old college student from a family of farmers in Litchfield, New Hampshire.  A leader on youth issues, she has organized student call-in days to her Senator and worked to educate fellow students about state legislative efforts to reduce the burden of student debt.  Shultz also served as the student representative at a press conference on clean energy policy called by Maine Governor John E. Baldacci.

Brantley Hawkins is a sophomore at the University of Connecticut who is spending part of his winter break to bring out the youth vote in New Hampshire.  Hawkins is a youth vote leader on his campus, working with a CONNPIRG coalition to increase voter turnout on campus by over 700 percent on his University of Connecticut Campus.  He also helped to organize fellow students to appear at candidate trail events attended by Governor Mitt Romney and Senator John McCain to ask their plans to address issues important to young people.

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New Hampshire Public Interest Research Group’s (NHPIRG) mission is to deliver persistent, result-oriented public interest activism that protects consumers, encourages a fair, sustainable economy, and fosters responsive, democratic government.

The Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project is the nation’s largest youth voter mobilization program.  Since 2004, we have registered more than 600,000 young people and made more than 650,000 peer to peer voter turnout contacts to get young people to the polls on Election Day. Due in large part to our efforts, the youth vote increased by 4.3 million votes, or 9% in 2004 and an analysis of our work in 2006 found that in the student dense precincts in which we worked, the youth vote increased on average by 157%.