<< The Body Politic

Mid-week roundup

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

What’s happening in the citizenship world? Here’s a mid-week roundup of recent tidbits we found interesting:

• The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) has a number of recent findings about youth voting behaviors. We’ve covered their ambitious report “Understanding a Diverse Generation: Youth Civic engagement in the United States” before, but they’ve since come out with more information–including a comparison of the number of young (18-29 year old) voters to those over 65 (in case you were wondering, there are more of the former); an analysis of current voter registration by young Americans in key battleground states as compared to the 2008 voting cycle (the number of new, young Democratic voters have dropped); and a look at youth voting in the Iowa Caucus.
• Peter Levine–the director of  CIRCLE–shares this research and offers some lessons in an op-ed published in the Cedar Rapids Gazette–now available in full at Peter’s blog.
• And finally, we shared this with our Facebook friends last week, but the story is too good to not post about here: Air Force ROTC cadet Matt Pirrello, who lost his entire right leg in a training accident, is still determined to become a pilot. Read about his inspiring journey here.