[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/10/29/art.youth.onecampaign.jpg
caption="Charlie Harris, a Western Kentucky University student, talks to Courtney Yates as the One.Org bus makes a stop at Western Kentucky University as part of its cross-country trip encouraging students and others to vote."]Rob Grabow
Author, “Voting with Our Pants Down”

With the election only six days away and 44 million 18- to 29-year-olds comprising a critical voting bloc with tremendous electoral power, many people still perceive – misperceive – that young voters are apathetic, self-absorbed hedonists who can't be counted on to vote. Recently I had an amiable but illuminating conversation with a Philadelphia Daily News writer, who echoed some of these charges. He said, "I'll believe there's a youth vote when I see it." Such sentiment is hardly a novelty. In 2004, famed author Tom Wolfe suggested in one national interview that only 6-9 percent of college students were truly politically or civically engaged. His charge went largely unchallenged.

In a way, that silence says more than Wolfe's words, since it indicates the media's role in reinforcing the misperception. Relative to the size of our voting constituency, we're disproportionately underrepresented in the national debate. It's wrong just to say we lack experience, ambition, or work ethic, as is sometimes claimed. More critically, because of the same unchallenged impression in the media, we often lack opportunity and access.

I believe that what's most disheartening is that when we are talked about, when questions of demographic identity arise, who comes on to answer them. For the most part it isn't us. Young voters are not included in the conversation; instead we are generally talked to, talked about, and told who we are.

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