Noah voting for the first time on CNN

Posted by admin on November 02, 2010 in CNN Appearances, Voting tagged with

On November 2, 2010 Noah was interviewed by Kyra Phillip’s on CNN Newsroom about his experience inspiring first time voters to go to the polls before he was even old enough to vote.

Click Here to watch the video on CNN

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October 30th, 2010

By Noah Gray

I just did it for the first time. Finally! 18 years, and I finally voted for the first time. I’ve been working to motivate young people across America to vote for the past three years, not being old enough to vote myself, but this election season I was able to voice my opinion and exercise my constitutional right to vote.

I voted absentee, and I must say it was quite an effort to make sure I got my absentee ballot and mailed it out in time. It being my first time, I wish I was able to actually vote at the polls but being that I am at school in Washington DC and I am registered to vote in Florida- it just wasn’t possible for me, but it still felt great!

For the 2008 elections, I made it my mission to encourage as many young people as I possibly could to take advantage of their constitutional right and exercise their right to vote. I appeared on national television multiple times expressing the importance of voting, created “Never Forget Your First Time” t-shirts to promote voting, and started the “Doing It for the First Time” Video Contest and offered incentives to young people in my hopes of getting them to vote.

“Virgin Voting” began as a short documentary and it became more that that. It quickly became an ongoing movement and as my project gained more exposure, I acted quickly to utilize the media attention to create a hype among young people that voting was cool and voting was important. From that point on, it was my goal to get more young people informed and voting, but I must say that I was not able to work as hard motivating youth among America for this crucial midterm election.

Just as many young people have told me as to why they have not voted in the past, being in college takes up a lot of your time and it is sometimes difficult to work on other things than school. I am not saying that it is OK not to vote because school is taking up too much of your time-I made the time to make sure I voted. What I am saying is that I wish I could have devoted more time to taking a more active role in motivating young people to vote in the 2010 midterm elections. I wanted to take Virgin Voting to the next level and express the importance of voting in midterm elections — not just presidential elections — but with the transition from high school to college, I unfortunately was not able to dedicate enough time to do all I wanted to do for this election season. I hope to spend more time tackling the apathy among young people and drive more young people than ever to the polls in 2012.

With just a few days until election day, I urge those of you who have not voted yet to do some research and get to the polls on Tuesday November 2nd. Midterm elections may not seem as important as presidential elections but in reality, they do matter. This is a key election year, big changes could occur and as a citizen of the United States of America, YOU have the power to influence those changes. VOTE!