Full Disclosure: I have known Matthew Segal for four years now and consider him to be a friend of mine (he even has helped me get the word out on this blog), so feel free to read the following post with that in mind.
For Matthew Segal, the founding director of the Student Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE), the path to Washington began with a 10-hour line in Gambier, Ohio. It was there, in 2004 that Matthew and I were both freshmen at Kenyon College. The difference between us at the time was that on Election Day, he was willing to get up early. Matthew arrived at the polls at 7:30 a.m. to cast his vote so he could volunteer for the rest of the day. Working at the Gambier voting center he watched as students filled in what would become the longest line for any poll in the country (a line that I stood in from afternoon until night). Watching 1,200 people wait around for 10 hours (even with all the guitar plucking, singing and card playing) flipped a switch in Matt’s mind.
“Looking at everyone in line made me feel so violated,” Matthew said. “For weeks we had all been going to these vote-for-change rallies, where the media and these rock stars and celebrities were all coming together and getting us all excited about voting for change and voting for history. Then, when we finally go to the polls, we were barely able to vote. It was like the theater of the absurd to me. Seeing everyone look so hopeless and forlorn, to quote Bob Dylan, made me decide not to become hopeless and forlorn, but rather to be motivated by the truly troubling incident. That’s why I am now working in public service.”
I met with Matthew yesterday in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel (home of Eliot Spitzer’s infamous rendezvous) in the business district of Washington D.C. I figured if I was going to devote a blog to the exploration of youth involvement in today’s political landscape, Matt was an obvious choice for my first post. Matt runs what he calls “the only youth non-profit that I know of here in Washington or perhaps even in the country that is working explicitly on election protection,” SAVE. It’s a place that lobbies college presidents to pledge to make voter orientation as important as freshman orientation, tries to convince Congress to allow college ID as a legitimate form of identification at the polls, and could be the first place young people turn to if they have any kind of problem with their voting. He is, in other words, a guy who spends his time trying to feel the pulse of the youth vote.
Matthew wore a newly pressed suit, well matched with a light-blue tie, but in his morning haste left his apartment wearing one brown and one black shoe. At only 22, he seems an unlikely candidate to be running an office—with a staff that fluctuates from about four to six—out of the heart of D.C.
“Even I think it’s a little crazy,” he said. “I was in Congresswoman [Stephanie] Tubbs Jones’ office the other day, and I told her chief of staff that I was going to have interns this summer. When I said that, I turned bright red and started laughing hysterically. I am way too young to have interns. I felt like a total schmuck.”
Feelings of being a schmuck (or a “schlemiel” or a “putz” as he would also say in the interview) aside, Matt is a guy with voter’s rights on his mind. When most kids look forward to their 21st birthday as the time they can finally show their ID at a liquor store, Matthew got his kicks from the Department of Motor Vehicles.
“I had so much fun going to the DMV for my 21st birthday,” he said. “I went there with my friends to get my new license and I was hoping she didn’t ask me if I had registered to vote, because it’s law that they have to. I couldn’t wait to file a compliant with the secretary of state. I’m joking of course. And I was almost angry when she asked me because I was trying to prove a point that the Federal Government is not enforcing the laws.”
When that switch was flipped in 2004, Matthew went from someone slightly passionate about politics to someone involved in politics, and that is a huge difference.
“I’m sick of government being all about talk and less about action,” Matthew said. “Do I think that anyone in this election can completely change this culture in Washington—the culture that still debates the existence of global warming rather than doing something to stop it? Do I think they can single-handedly solve this? No. But I think that what this election symbolizes through a surge of political participation, especially from young voters, is that we want action. I know I want action, and this election seems like it could be a start.”
For Matthew, there is no action more important than voting.
“We ought to make voting participation something as fundamentally taught as literacy in this country,” he said. “You can’t navigate throughout society unless you can read. You need to read to do almost anything. But you can live in this society, unfortunately, without voting, and we ought to set the precedent and institutionalize the value that if you don’t vote you’re not a valued member of society. Democracy is contingent on healthy, thoughtful, democratic participation to ensure all of our wellbeing.”
