Rock The Vote (RTV) was established in 1992 to “engage and build political power for young people in our country.” The organization’s target group is the 18-to-29-year-old age bracket, which, as of mid-2012, consisted of approximately 44 million people. Recognizing the potential influence of a demographic this large, RTV aims to “seiz[e] the power of the youth vote to create political and social change” of a left-wing nature. Toward that end, the organization has registered (as of 2012) more than 5 million voters under the age of 30.

To mobilize those registrants to take the next step and actually go to the polls on election day, RTV makes use of online social networks, online advertising, traditional media (radio, television, and print advertising), email outreach, text messaging, telephone calls, door-to-door canvassing, and college campus events. Further, the organization has carefully studied the relative efficacy of each of these approaches, noting, for example, that “a door knock can boost turnout by about 8 points for about $25 per additional vote”; “a live phone call increases turnout by 3-5 points for $20-26 per additional vote”; “a text message increases turnout by 3-4 points and can be very inexpensive”; and “multiple contacts from a campaign can increase turnout by 10-14 percentage points.”

By RTV’s calculus, current trends in young-voter opinion polls indicate that the so-called “millenial generation” will strongly support the Democratic Party for many years to come, thereby helping to shift American politics and values permanently leftward. For example, an RTV handbook titled Winning Young Voters notes that 47% of all voters younger than thirty identify themselves as Democrats, vs. just 28% who call themselves Republicans. The numbers are even more lopsided within specific demographics—e.g., Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 73% to 6% margin among young black voters; 51% to 21% among young Latinos; and 55% to 26% among young women.

RTV’s signature strategy for motivating young people to become politically engaged is to form partnerships with music-industry and popular-culture icons who share the organization’s left-wing values. These artists, in turn, promote RTV and its agendas at their public performances. Among those who have participated in RTV’s campaigns over the years are such notables as Christina Aguilera, Clay Aiken, the Backstreet Boys, the Beastie Boys, Beyonce, the Black Eyed Peas, Sheryl Crow, Janeane Garofalo, Josh Groban, Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Pink, and Pitbull. Many celebrity spokespeople have also appeared in public service announcements in RTV’s behalf; among these are Ashanti, Miley Cyrus, Robert DeNiro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Downey Jr., Jamie Foxx, Anne Hathaway, Janet Jackson, Samuel L. Jackson, Madonna, Ricky Martin, Sarah Jessica Parker, Rosie Perez, the Ramones, and Justin Timberlake.

RTV began in 1992, shortly after a Fort Lauderdale record store owner who sold cocaine through his store was busted for selling 2 Live Crew’s 1989 rap music album Nasty as They Wanna Be. He was convicted of obscenity charges after Judge Jose Gonzalez had denounced the album, which contained songs such as “Me So Horny” and “Dick Almighty,” for its “references to violence against women and abusive sex.” In turn, music industry executives at Virgin Records, worried about the impact of obscenity rulings on their financial bottom line, created Rock the Vote as a Democratic voter turnout operation targeting 18-to-24-year-olds. Those executives collaborated in this initiative with Steve Barr, a finance chair of the Democratic Party. As conservative writer Daniel Greenfield notes:

“In the midst of a terrible economy and a crime wave, Democrats were boosted by a demographic least likely to share adult concerns about the economy, schools and public safety, and most likely to be animated by phantom ideological narratives about social justice, abortion and global warming. Democrats enjoyed the highest turnout for younger voters in a generation with a 31% turnout. Especially in [the swing states of] Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan.”

RTV was founded by Duke University graduate Heather Smith, who had previously worked in leadership positions with such groups as the Green Corps’ Field School for Environmental Organizing in Boston; Student PIRG’s New Voters Project (a massive campaign to register and mobilize young voters); and Young Voter Strategies (which later merged with RTV). Today, Smith serves as president of RTV.

music industry executives at Virgin Records, worried about the impact of obscenity rulings on their bottom line, created Rock the Vote. Officially its purpose was to mobilize youth turnout to avoid having the country run by older politicians who just didn’t “get the youth”, or at least the destructive culture that older executives were pushing on the youth, but RTV was a Democratic voter turnout operation from the very beginning.

RTV’s current national political director is Dartmouth College graduate Amanda Brown, who worked with “Obama for America” (now known as Organizing for America) in 2008. The following year, she served as assistant to the director in President Obama’s Office of Political Affairs. Later, Brown was named advisor for strategic planning at the U.S. Department of Energy, where she worked to advance energy secretary Steven Chu’s agendas.

On March 23, 2011, RTV held its first annual Democracy Day to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the ratification of the 26th Amendment, which gave 18-year-olds the right to vote. On Democracy Day, teachers in more than 1,200 classrooms nationwide taught a so-called “Democracy Class”—using videos (some of which featured appearances by RTV-affiliated artists), classroom discussion, and a mock election—to familiarize young people with the political process. Launched with help from the Future Educators Association, the National Education Association, YouthBuild, and the Youth Policy Institute, the Democracy Class program has become one of RTV’s most important ongoing projects. Toward the end of each class session, all eligible students are registered to vote, while underage and non-citizen students “pledge” that they, too, will register and vote as soon as they meet eligibility requirements.

From 2002-05, RTV’s president was the left-wing political commentator Jehmu Greene.

In 2022, RTV’s “Featured Civic Technology Partners” included such leftwing allies as Black Lives Matter, March for Our Lives, MoveOn, Planned Parenthood, The Arab American Institute, assorted unions, the NAACP, the National Iranian American Council, and CAIR.

Black Lives Matter’s DeRay McKesson was a director at RTV as of 2022.

Also in 2022, RTV partnered with NBA teams, Cox cable, Foot Locker, Gap, WarnerMedia, Macy’s and Yelp, to name just a few of the companies that participated in its “Brands for Democracy” initiative.

While officially RTV is a 501(c)(3) nonpartisan nonprofit, in 2022 its director, Jessica Reeves, served “as a political appointee in the Biden–Harris administration as Director of Public Engagement at the Small Business Administration.” In other words, it was not only partisan, but was being partly supervised from inside the administration of a prospective presidential candidate — a blatantly illegal arrangement.

Moreover, RTV’s upper echelons were stacked with Democrat political operatives: 

• Muthoni Wambu Kraal, another director, worked for both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and President Obama, and as the National Political & Organizing Director for the Democratic National Committee. She also sat on the board of ActBlue.
• RTV’s president, Carolyn DeWitt, worked on the 2012 Democrat convention.
• Amanda Brown Lierman, RTV’s co-chair, doubled as the campaign director for a partisan leftist SuperPAC and formerly worked for President Obama. 

Additional Information

RTV’s former Washington director (2003-2007), Hans Riemer, has noteworthy ties to Barack Obama. From 2007 until March 2008, Riemer served as the Obama presidential campaign’s national youth vote director. Previously (from 2001-03), he had been a senior policy analyst at the Campaign for America’s Future.