Time has a new piece about the youth vote movement and the early efforts of Presidential candidates to reach out to an engaged generation of young Americans.

The fact that the Millenial generation (which is a huge block of voters) is bucking the "apathetic" trend of their older brothers and sisters is quickly becoming conventional wisdom.

After more than a decade of declining or stagnating numbers, turnout among voters under age 30 increased by almost 5 million in 2004 and almost 2 million in 2006. Voting experts say this is because a new generation has come of age — the Millienials — and they are more civically engaged young adults than so-called GenXers were during the 1990s. The Millenial Generation — those born between 1979 and 1994 — is also three times the size of Generation X. They've voted Democratic in the last two elections and according to a New York Times/CBS News/MTV poll released in late June, they plan to again in 2008. That poll found that 54% of voters under age 30 say they intend to vote Democratic. But 40% of young adults ages 18 to 24 describe themselves as Independents, according to an April poll by the Harvard Institute of Politics. Because of that, Smith says Republicans could still win the youth vote in 2008.

I have said it on this blog and at meetings before and I will say it again: Young people are paying attention but that doesn't mean the battle is won. The added attention and focus on our early successes only increas the stakes.  We need to keep pushing, keep innovating, and do everythign we can to translate the interest and support of young Americans into a long term Democratic voting bloc.

The good news is, for the first time in a long time, we aren't the only Democrats really trying to do this.  Luckily, Democratic presidential candidates are blowing Republicans away not only in youth support, but in efforts to reach out to young people as actual voters - not just an internet loving volunteer force (think there is a connection?):

So far, however, Democratic presidential frontrunners have been better at reaching out to young people. The Clinton, Obama and Edwards campaigns have all hired youth vote coordinators to focus on organization among students and young professionals. Obama hired Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes to oversee the campaign's social networking sites, while Hillary Clinton is using YouTube to reach its young audience — most recently by allowing them to select her campaign song, Celine Dion's "You and I." John Edwards continues to run his One Corps, a community service organization comprised mainly of young adults.

Our own Alexandra Acker gets a mention in the article as she compares this cycle's efforts to those of the past:

Such youth outreach this early on in an election season is unprecedented by Democrats, says Alexandra Acker, executive director of Young Democrats of America. Acker served as the youth outreach coordinator for John Kerry in 2004, but she wasn't brought on staff until after the primaries. "The biggest difference this election cycle is that all of the Democratic candidates now have a personal commitment to young voters, she says. "We're leaps and bounds ahead of where we were in 2004, and that was leaps and bounds ahead of 2000."

Personally, my favorite part of the article comes from the "we don't get it" teams at the Guiliani, McCain, and Romney campaigns:

On the Republican side, neither McCain nor Giuliani have hired youth vote coordinators, though Giuiliani does employ the same Republican pollster that Smith's team has used. A spokesman for McCain emphasized the campaign's presence on Facebook and MySpace. Mitt Romney's campaign has not met with Smith, says a campaign spokesman, because he already learned how to do successful youth vote outreach as Massachusetts . Recently Romney announced a "Students for Mitt" program in which college students receive a 10% commission for every $1,000 they raise for the campaign.

Oh those Republicans … too busy firing staff and flip flopping on commutation to realize how important our generation is.