"Now I'm into it," Cummings said. "It's actually fun, I guess, because now I really want to see who wins and if all these people we registered will really vote."

Cummings is one of the many Bay Area teens who are getting involved with the political process even though they cannot vote. The teens come to politics with different objectives. Some, like Cummings, start because their parents pushed them. Some are generally interested in politics and others are advocating for their own issues.

At the New Voters are Rising project, Field Director Florence McCrary was mildly annoyed that only Christina arrived on time to work the phone bank on the Thursday before the election. Normally there are six or seven volunteers. She put it in perspective, though. Teenagers have a lot of other things on their minds, she said. Still, she said, they get there eventually and do the job.

This project, funded by the Rose Foundation but facilitated at Downs Memorial United Methodist Church in North Oakland, registered about 2,100 people from Hayward to Richmond before the October 18 deadline.

Since registration ended, the teens have been calling the people they registered to remind them to vote. McCrary said they will also be walking around the North Oakland neighborhood on the afternoon of the election to ask people if they have voted and provide them with rides to their polling places in church vans.

Jill Ratner, president of the Rose Foundation, said she wanted teen voter outreach workers from neighborhoods with low-voter turnout to teach people in their own communities about voting. She said young people are sometimes effective where older people are not. They can "communicate to potential voters that it's important," said Ratner. "They say, 'I can't vote, but you can.'"

Not being able to vote is what motivates Robert Reynolds, 17, a senior at Berkeley High School. Robert is vice president of the National Youth Rights Association. That group wants to lower the voting age to 16 at most. Reynolds got particularly interested in lowering the voting age when he realized that he would turn 18 a month after the November election.

Voting is a fundamental right, he said. "We're taxed and have no say in how our tax dollars are spent," said Reynolds.

Some people are listening. California State Sen. John Vasconcellos of San Jose introduced a bill to lower the voting age earlier this year. Although the bill was defeated in committee, Reynolds said he and the National Youth Rights Association's 4,500 members have high hopes of reintroducing the bill and have planned a protest this weekend in Sacramento with that aim in mind. "We're not going to stop until it passes," he said.

Ratner, at the Rose Foundation, said one of her first jobs was on a referendum to lower the voting age in Illinois to 18 in the 1970s. She said, "It was a really frightening prospect to have no control over these decisions that could mean mostly death. ...I think that is a little bit how people are feeling now even though there is no draft." She does not, however, see any overwhelming or compelling reason to lower the voting age again but recognizes that teens need ways to affect the election's outcome.

"It's very hard when the stakes are so high for young people, who sometimes have the most at stake, to sit on the sidelines," said Ratner.

Ben Lindquist, 15, said that though he is too young to vote, he has no intention of sitting on the bench in this game. Ben works with the Democratic Party Headquarters in Alameda doing door-to-door precinct work. Ben talks about politics as if he has always been involved. "Last election, I was very supportive of Nader," said Ben speaking of the 2000 election when he was 11-years old. "This election, I still like Nader but I don't like Bush."

On Election Day, he plans to wake up at 4:30 a.m. for a fun-filled day walking the precinct, handing out information about Democratic candidates and knocking on doors to get people out to vote.

Ben characterizes his life as a campaign worker as exciting and fun. Even though none of his friends are a part of it, he keeps coming back because he loves politics. The campaign life has been good to him and has solidified his interest in possibly pursuing a future in politics.

"I really like helping at headquarters and I really have no plans for after the elections. I hate to see it go."