http://www.villagevoice.com/print/issues/0424/hong.phpA New Voting Age for Women: 26
by Cathy Hong
Even shopping at an Urban Outfitters, a retail chain that caused a small scandal this year when it created a T-shirt with the phrase "Voting is for Old People," 25-year-old Hunter College student Judy Denby hardly fits the mold of the sheltered and indifferent slacker. To earn money for tuition, she spent two years in Kosovo, working in the U.S. Army's payroll department. She says being in the military was "not a good experience," and she strongly believes high-ranking officials have abused their power in Iraq.
But Denby has other strong beliefs. "I'm not voting," she says. "It's out of our hands. There's nothing we can do."
Women like Denby help to account for the 62 percent of females between the ages of 18 and 25 who didn't show up for the last presidential election, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. "There is a huge number of women who are on the sidelines of democracy, and young women are on the top of those bleachers," says Page Gardner, project co-director of the nonpartisan Women's Voices, Women's Vote.
Historically, younger women of all races and classes have been less likely to vote than their older counterparts, but they have at least edged out their male peers. Then a study funded in 2002 by the Pew Charitable Trust for People and Press painted a gloomier picture. It showed that only 22 percent of 20- to 25-year-old women vote regularly, versus 28 percent of men in that age group. Could it be that young women are giving up on the game?
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http://www.villagevoice.com/print/issues/0424/lerner.phpThe candidates' pitiful pitch for single women
Awkward Kerry, Hopeless Bush
by Sharon Lerner
June 15th, 2004
Twenty-two-year-old Laura Schalchli doesn't know which presidential candidate she'll support in November—or whether she'll vote at all. A fresh-faced art student at Parsons, Schalchli is one of almost 38 million single women who sat out the last election. Why? "Apathetic youth, I guess," she says sheepishly, adding that, though her boyfriend has been pushing her to read The Economist, she doesn't follow news closely because "the whole thing just upsets me."
Schalchli knows enough to realize she's no fan of George W. Bush, though. "Why does he always have to talk about God?" she asks, wrinkling her nose as if she'd smelled something foul. "And then he went and started a war for no reason." But for all her disdain for the president, Schalchli knows, and cares, little about his competitor.
Dis them though she may, the candidates are drooling over single women like Schalchli. Since pollsters recently realized that never married, divorced, and widowed females make up the largest untapped voting bloc—some 22 million single women registered to vote skipped the 2000 election, and 16 million never signed up at all—both major parties have been engaged in a desperate and unseemly scuffle for their votes. From the president—or his handlers, anyway—we have the "W stands for Women" push. To which the Kerry folks have responded that "the W in George W. stands for 'wrong' on women's issues." To which Ann Wagner, co-chair of the Republican National Committee shot back that, in Kerry's case, "W stands for waffle." To which the puzzled single woman might reply, "Wait, Kerry doesn't even have a W in his name." Or more to the point, "What have either of you done for us lately?"
There's no question the candidates want single women. But do single women want the candidates? "No, none of them," says Tracy Brown, a 43-year-old lawyer at a U.N.-affiliated agency. Delicately perched on a stool at Moe's bar in Fort Greene, Brown expressed her dismay with the president. "He took us to war under false pretenses," she says, shaking her head. "We were lied to. And now, with all the money he's putting into defense, there no money for the things I care about—health care, education." Still, Brown says she doesn't know how she'll vote in November. "I don't feel like Kerry's reaching out to people like me." Not that she expects him—or other politicians—to do much to win her over. "I'm an African American, single woman," says Brown. "We're used to struggling."
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