Mobilize the millennials: what campaigns can do to fire up young people.

If you listen to the rhetoric of most political candidates, you would think that issues concerning young people would be at the forefront of the national policy agenda. We've been hearing since junior high graduation that we're the future of our nation, yet rarely do we see political leaders speak to our interests, let alone make policy that is positive for us. We're strapped with school debt and largely uninsured, the majority of us oppose the war, and many of us feel that our elected officials and candidates have no idea what is going on in our lives.

It's easy and logical for young people to be cynical about politics, and that's a problem for anyone who wants to change the face of power in our country. But this disengagement is also an opportunity: done right, organizing young people expands the electorate, adds new voices to the political process, and creates a powerful political constituency that can help change our country.

That's why Wellstone Action created Campus Camp Wellstone, a two-day introductory training for students on campuses across the country. Our aim is to help students see the relevance of politics to their lives and help them with skills to be leaders and organizers. We've had a lot of success with these trainings, but we have also run into a challenge that is present for almost every electoral campaign: convincing even highly active young people that engagement with electoral politics is relevant and important.

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So what are the keys for campaigns to mobilize young people? Here are some ideas:

Engage us peer-to-peer. Empirical research has shown that the most successful field campaigns targeted at young people are those in which someone their own age and from their own community talked to other young voters at their doors and where they hang out. We turn off political ads and rhetoric, but turn on when another young person talks with us about matters that affect our lives. So find out where young people gather. Use teams of young people for "bar and cafe storming" and "vote mobbing" efforts--send them to the places that they themselves hang out to register their peers.

Get good contact information. Physical address and landline telephone number are not reliable sources of contact information for young people. When collecting information from young people, focus on obtaining their cell numbers, e-mail addresses and social networking pages. These are the best ways to reach them. Plus, when young people move, you will still be able to contact them and turn them out to vote because you will have obtained contact information that moves with them.

Connect with us. Make a conscious effort to reach out to the young volunteers and supporters who come to the office and want to help. Organize brown bag lunches or informal gatherings of your young supporters, and tell them about the inside workings of the campaign. We are well-informed on the issues and have good ideas. We're willing to do grunt work on campaigns, but put our brains and skills to work as well. Use these regular gatherings with young people to ask their advice about what the campaign is doing well and where it needs improvement.

Give us responsibility. One of the first things you can do with young volunteers is to enlist them to organize their peers. Challenge a young supporter to recruit five friends as volunteers. Do the same with each of those volunteers. You'll quickly identify the "super volunteers" to whom you will gradually give more responsibilities.

Make us leaders. Young people can become outstanding leaders on campaigns when empowered to do so. At the beginning of the campaign, identify different roles that you would like to see young people fill as the campaign evolves--volunteer coordinator, field organizers, press aides--and make a conscious effort to recruit your young "super volunteers" to fill these roles.

Use music and culture as organizing tools. Local bands, particularly campus bands, frequently perform for your target audience of young people. Be sure to post your volunteers at the entrances to these shows. Or better yet, use the contacts your young volunteers have with musicians to ask them to make a pitch for your campaign during their performances. You can also ask these groups to play at campaign-sponsored rallies or meet-ups.

Organizing this way only works when your campaign is compelling and your message resonates with young people. Here are some ideas for making a compelling case in your conversations with young people:

Talk about power. Young people don't want to hear about our "civic obligation" to the political process--particularly when so many of us feel that those in power have reneged on their civic obligation to look out for us. Instead, young people respond to the idea that powerful interests benefit from our disengagement--that they don't want us to participate. A candidate might say, "The politicians who ignore the issues that affect our lives directly benefit from you staying quiet. They won't listen until you speak out and force them to."

Don't solely focus on the candidate. Rather than talking about the qualifications of your candidate, talk about the policy choices of your candidate that will affect young people. For example, a campaign might let young people know the state legislature is scheduled to vote on higher education issues that directly impact students.

Make your message urgent. For example, "Your vote, your voice, is crucial. Student participation in recent elections has forced our issues to the forefront nationally. Issues like tuition and student loans are now high on the national agenda because of a rise in young people's participation in politics. Register to vote by Oct. 13!"

Because young people do not access media in the same way as their parents, campaigns need to focus on non-traditional marketing such as search engine ads, social networking sites, text-messaging and targeted cable advertising.

There is growing evidence that efforts like these to incorporate young people into campaigns are paying off. Voter turnout among young people in recent elections is up by record numbers and we are being noticed as a voting bloc. This work is already paying off: student loan interest rates were cut in one of the first bills passed by the new majority in Congress.

Those of us in the "Millennial Generation," young people in their teens and twenties, are on track to make up one third of the electorate by 2015. It can only be to our benefit to start mobilizing and politicizing our peers. And if the candidates and their campaigns do not respond, then we'll just have to run for office ourselves--and win.

Mattie Weiss is the director of the Campus Camp Wellstone program at Wellstone Action.