Thursday, October 23, 2008

SACRAMENTO – The California Young Democrats (CYD) are gearing up for the final stretch of the 2008 election campaign.  Saturday, October 18th, CYD along with local host Chapter, the University of California Santa Barbara College Democrats co-sponsored a volunteer campaign invasion to help elect candidate Hannah-Beth Jackson to State Senate District 19.  This invasion resulted in 500 new Democratic registrations and the UCSB College Democrats won national recognition on Monday, October 20, 2008 for being a part of a non-partisan voter registration coalition that registered 10,000 new voters this year, the most registrations on any college campus in the country.

This campaign invasion was just one of dozens of Young Voter Revolution events happening across the state.  The recent CYD Voting Man camping and canvassing invasion in Stockton, CA added hundreds of Democratic voter registrations and voter contacts in the Northern San Joaquin Valley.  This activism among young people doesn’t surprise California Young Democrats President Rocky Fernandez, “Young people have the most on the line in this election. With a souring economy, rising college tuition, scarce job availability, and several threats to our future quality of life, it is easy to see why young people are leading the revolution for change in this country,” said Fernandez.  In 2004, voters under 34 were the only age demographic to vote for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.  This year, young voters will be the margin of victory in electing Barack Obama to be our next president.  Given the California Presidential Primary this year, in which 852,459 voters under 30 cast ballots, young people have shown that this is the year of the young voter!