The buzz coming from Harford County College this Saturday might literally be the overdriven distortion cranked up on an electric guitar, but, figuratively speaking, it will be the soundtrack to the war against youth political apathy.
Two months shy of the Presidential General Election, the push is on to encourage those who have not yet voted to register and learn a little more about the process. Enter Rock’n’Register, a six-band extravaganza scheduled for Saturday, September 13, at Harford Community College’s Susquehanna Gymnasium.
The event is part Battle of the Bands, part Battle of the Benefits and part Crash Course For Those New to Voting. Patrons will not only use actual Harford County Board of Elections electronic voting machines to cast their ballots for their favorite band, but will also vote for which local charity or service organization will receive the lion’s share of the event’s proceeds.
The doors will open at 2 p.m. and music should start fairly soon thereafter. Tickets are $6.00 in advance, or $8 at the door, and advanced sale tickets can be purchased on campus at HCC or online via www.rocknregister.com.
Rock’n’Register is the brainchild of Jobeth Bowers – a 27-year-old Carroll County native who moved to Harford County about a year ago and came up with the idea for the concert when he started thinking of ways to interest a younger generation to participate in the electoral process.
“I was in a band a long time ago and have been interested in promoting voter registration and awareness among young people for quite some time,” he said.
Bowers, who said he doesn’t have any direct ties into the political system and doesn’t have any particular intentions of running for office despite working for a Baltimore City law firm, found previous attempts at energizing the youth vote to be “bland.”
“Some colleagues were discussing holding a voter registration drive, and I found the idea of setting up a table outside of a grocery store or a Wal-Mart somewhat bland, and that we should find a reason to get people, especially young people, to specifically attend the voter registration drive. From my experience I’ve found that the one thing that is best able to draw a crowd of young people is a concert, and the ball got rolling accordingly to have a concert which was also a voter registration drive,” he added.
For the entertainment side of the event, Bowers turned to social networking sites like MySpace to find local bands that might be interested in rocking the vote.
After an online weeding-out process of nearly 100 bands and some last minute lineup changes, six bands will be playing at Rock’n’Register on Saturday, in the following arrangement:
2:00pm-2:45pm – King Vitamin
3:00pm-3:45 – The Niki Barr Band
4:00pm-4:45pm – Steel Nerve
5:00pm-5:45pm – Concrete Prophet
6:00pm-6:45pm – Yell vs. Chant
7:00pm-7:45 – Arlington Sleeps
The bands are from all over Maryland, but mostly from Harford, Cecil or Baltimore Counties, and represent a range of musical styles, Bowers said.
With the ball in motion, Harford Community College stepped up as the biggest sponsor of the event.
“They were excited about the idea and have been on board ever since,” Bowers said.
The Rock’n’Register team also reached out to political groups in Harford County, including the Young Democrats, Republicans and Green party. A number of politicians and elected officials are also expected to be on hand to talk to the young would-be voters. The Arena Club, who will be attending the event to provide information about their facility, chipped in with a financial donation.
In the true spirit of democracy, the door money from Rock’n’Register will be awarded based on a vote of attendees at the event.
The Harford County Board of Elections will be bringing two voting machines for newly registered voters to see before using them for real on November 4th. There will be a live ballot in the machines to vote for the overall best performing band, which local non-profit will benefit from the proceeds of the concert, and a few other questions.
The organizations hoping to secure the popular vote Saturday night, and bring home the much-needed cash, include the Humane Society of Harford County, Harford County Public Library, Harford Land Trust, Harford County State’s Attorney’s Office Children’s Advocacy Center and Hole in the Wall Gang Camps.
Bowers said the purpose of the event is multi-faceted, so as to not only register people to vote, but allow them to ask questions, connect to people and learn more about the political process and what and for whom they’re actually voting.
“This is the inaugural installation of Rock’n’Register, if you will, but if we can get the support for it, I am not opposed to making it an annual event, not solely on election cycles. There’s a new batch of young people turning 18 every year and it’d be a shame not to open up an opportunity like this to them to not only get them registered to vote, but to introduce them to the political system, allow them to meet members of political groups, etc.,” Bowers added.
Is this event going to be partisan? The article states that it also is facilitating meeting (introductions to) “groups”.
Although it sounds like a great event…did the organizers maintain equal representation of political factions?
Go Dagger !
Rock’n’Register has been billed as a non-partisan event from the very beginning. We’ve done our best to seek our any political interest groups, more so toward young people, from the very beginning. From very early on we’ve had help on the publicity and promotional end from the young democrats, young republicans and the young greens in Harford County.
We sent identical invitations to all of the candidates that were to be on a harford county ballot, even if they were to be running unopposed, as provided to us by the state board of elections.
After that, we left it up to the candidates and their local representatives to take the next step. Some have taken the next step, where as others have not.
I’m not sure there’s been much more that we could have done to be “fair and balanced” in coordinating the event.
HCC was actually pretty adamant determining that there was no underlying agenda to the event before throwing their support and involvement to the project.
On a side note to the issue, we actually denied a specific request from one candidate’s supporters who were lobbying hard to have said candidate’s rock band perform at the event.
We felt that allowing such a performance would be unfair, since not all candidates have performing bands.
I hope these comments have helped answer your questions.
Jobeth, your quandry is not very different from some of the situations we have here on The Dagger. We invite everyone to come and participate, but you can’t punish one party just because the opposing party doesn’t want to join in.
Example: The Dagger got about three letters from Mike Geppi of the Harford County Republican Party leading up to, during and following the GOP National Convention.
We haven’t received anything from the local Democratic party regarding their national convention – even though we’ve been in touch with the local party leaders previously and they know we accept and print anything they want to send our way.
I personally believe it would be unfair to punish Geppi and the GOP, who are being proactive, just because the Dems are being inactive. Some may disagree and say that shows a bias – or may even assume bias when they see 3 GOP letters and no Dem letters.
If it were me, I would have let the candidate’s rock band perform as well. I’m sure you offered equal time to the other candidates and if they really wanted to participate they could have put together something – karaoke or a musical tribute to Ronald Reagan, etc.
I don’t think it’s up to the venue (be it media or an organizer) to make those decisions for the candidate.
Assuming we’re talking about Democratic Aberdeen City Councilman Mike Hiob and his band, we could have probably talked Republican former Aberdeen City Councilman Dave Yensan into putting some type of musical review together.
Then if Yensan were to give a political sermon at his church, Hiob would have to don a rosary and say some Hail Marys if he wanted equal time in the House of God.
Maybe I’ll start penning some nonpartisan, local political songs in anticipation of the next Rock’n’Register…
Jobeth did a great job of building this as a non-partisan event. I hope it is as successful as all his work deserves it to be.
I have to attend a wedding and won’t be able to attend, but I encourage everyone to go– and to show support for McCain-Palin at the event!
Having just attended the Rock’n’Register, I have to say what a great job JoBeth and the College did. I am partisan, and I have to point out that while the Board of Elections, the Harford County Obama Campaign, the non-partisan Vote the Power and The Young Dems of Harford County were there, not one person representing ANY Republican group was there. Frank Kratovil even stopped in to visit everyone. Clearly the Republicans in Harford County have other priorities rather than the young people of the county.
I just wanted to followup after the event for anyone who was interested in the turnout. Overall there were approximately 170 paid admissions to the event, allowing us donate a total of $800 to the Harford County Humane Society, as decided by touch screen ballot at the event.
The event was well received, but to verify the above post, the Republican party candidates and the young republican group did not attend, despite confirming their attendance less than a week before.
Overall, the event drew a crowd that was mostly too young to register to vote, but I believe the totals coming from the board of elections was somewhere in the range of 20 to 25 new registrations, based on the print out from the voting machine, which also asked whether or not the individual had registered to vote for the first time ever.
With the moderate success with this event, I hope to have a second Rock’n’Register, and eventually make it an annual event. I am currently brainstorming ways to expand the demographic and target more attendees who are in the age range to register to vote, which is the overall purpose of the event.
Expect to see more about Rock’n’Register II coming late April or early May, 2009.
–a little bit of shamelessness here, if anyone is interested in being involved in the next event, sponsoring the event or knows any business owners who might be interested in sponsoring Rock’n’Register II, feel free to have them contact me via the contact forms on http://www.rocknregister.com.