Freedom's Answer is a non-partisan, youth-led voter turnout

Voter turnout

Voter turnout is the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election . After increasing for many decades, there has been a trend of decreasing voter turnout in most established democracies since the 1960s...

 drive led by a coalition of youth organizations nationwide. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks

September 11, 2001 attacks

The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...

 in the United States, four young leaders came together in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 with the aid of Doug Bailey

Doug Bailey

Doug Bailey is an American political consultant and founder of The Hotline, a bipartisan, daily, online briefing on American politics.From 1968 to 1987, Bailey was President of Bailey Deardourff and Associates, among the first national political consulting firms...

 to form a new organization designed to lead the newly dubbed "9/11 generation" towards doing something positive with the new patriotism

Patriotism

Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...

 formed by the attacks. The four teens wrote a book called Freedom's Answer to detail their experiences following 9/11 and chronicle the early history of the organization.

Organization structure

The organization is a coalition of prominent youth organizations including National Association of Student Councils, Junior State of America

Junior State of America

The Junior State of America is an American non-partisan student-run youth organization. It is also the largest high school student-run organization in the country...

, National Honor Society

National Honor Society

The National Honor Society is a recognition program for high school students in grades 10-12 in the United States and in several other countries...

, Youth in Government, FFA

National FFA Organization

The National FFA Organization is an American youth organization known as a Career and Technical Student Organization, based on middle and high school classes that promote and support agricultural education...

, Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps

Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps

The Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps is a Federal program sponsored by the United States Armed Forces in high schools across the United States...

, YMCA

YMCA

The Young Men's Christian Association is a worldwide organization of more than 45 million members from 125 national federations affiliated through the World Alliance of YMCAs...

, Boys State, Girls State

Boys/Girls State

Boys State and Girls State are summer leadership and citizenship programs sponsored by the American Legion and the American Legion Auxiliary for high school students between their junior and senior years. Boys and Girls State programs both began in 1937 and are held in each of the U.S. states ,...

, and a variety of other organizations who embraced the concept. Its goal was to establish state teams in all 50 states to recruit high schoolers into registering their schools as official schools and to begin voter registration drive

Voter registration drive

A voter registration drive is an effort, often undertaken by a political campaign, political party, or other outside groups , that seeks to register to vote those who are eligible but not registered...

s and voter promise drives within the individual schools.

Goals

For the 2004 election, this organization had a goal of recruiting 10,000 schools nationwide; among them they planned to recruit 250,000 students in the program and using them bring 2.5 million new voters to the polls. The organization fell short of their goals but still credits themselves with contributing to the national increase in voter turnout in the election. The Florida state team was credited with the largest voter increase and thus won the MegaPrize, a collection of donated prizes for the state that generated the largest increase.