Mara Gordon | Can you hear me now? No.

There was a lot of talk about war.

There was talk of nuclear weapons and President Bush's "saber rattling;" there was talk of fiscal responsibility and aggressive diplomacy.

There was one, fleeting question about whether or not marijuana should be legalized - but everybody kind of laughed it off, a joke question for a joke candidate.

All this talk, of course, was at the Democratic presidential candidates' debate on Tuesday night, right down the street at Drexel. It's what politicians do best, and on Tuesday they did it well, evading questions and fending off attacks. But there were a precious few words devoted to issues that actually make a difference to our generation.

It's not that we don't care, or even that we don't vote. It's because we aren't taken into account in public-opinion polls, which often dictate what the candidates focus on.

These polls tell campaign strategists what issues voters care about, so it's unsurprising that candidates center their campaigns and platforms around those issues.

Most major opinion polls are done in a pretty straightforward manner: Pollsters call Americans at home, ask if they don't mind answering a few questions and fire away.

But what if you don't have a land line?

I don't have a land line; neither do any of my friends. We're voters and we're politically aware, but we only use our cell phones - so we're excluded from almost every political-opinion survey.

I called pollster Scott Keeter - on my cell phone, obviously - because he has done a fair amount of research on the "cell-only problem," as he calls it. He is the director of survey research at the Pew Research Center, and he acknowledged that young people are generally not represented in major opinion polls.

According to a study Keeter authored this summer, about 13 percent of American households don't have land lines, only cell phones. Those voters tend to be more liberal and generally Democratic. So why not just include them in mainstream polls?

Calling cell phones instead of land lines means reimbursing subjects for their minutes; it means potential interruptions when they're driving or at the gym. Basically, it's a lot more work to include exclusive cell-phone users in opinion polls - and the pollsters have gotten comfortable with their current methods.

It's not like 13 percent is enough to change public opinion about big issues like the war in Iraq or the fact that Hillary Clinton is the leading Democratic candidate.

But our numbers are growing and excluding cell-phone users could have significant implications in the future.

"We may be living on borrowed time," Penn political science professor Richard Johnston said in an e-mail interview.

If we continue to be ignored in opinion polls and if the candidates continue to ignore the issues that matter to us most, it may cost them an increasing number of votes.

Just take College senior Anton Helmke, a campus organizer for John Edwards whom I ran into rallying outside the debate on Tuesday night. He's involved, he's politically savvy - and he only uses a cell phone.

Helmke said he was disappointed that the debate organizers focused so exclusively on foreign policy. Instead, he wished there were more of an emphasis on education policy. "Domestic issues were barely touched at all," he said. "How can people make a decision?"

Penn Medical and Ph.D. student Erica Dwyer was another young activist at the debate on Tuesday night. Dwyer took part in a large protest advocating for universal health care and more American dollars to fight AIDS.

"While each candidate is going to say yes, health care is important, if you look at the details, they aren't really addressing it," Dwyer said.

She's another young voter who isn't getting surveyed, yet has a whole arsenal of issues she cares deeply about and wants the candidates to weigh in on.

It's not that the candidates talked about frivolous things. (Although one question about whether or not Dennis Kucinich had seen a UFO bordered on absurd.) Foreign policy and social security are substantive issues that should matter to all voters, regardless of age.

But the polls and the campaigns can't ignore our generation for long. If pollsters don't start asking us what we want and the candidates don't start talking about it, then it won't be long before they stop getting our votes.

Mara Gordon is a College senior from Washington, D.C. Her e-mail is gordon@dailypennsylvanian.com. Flash Gordon appears on Thursdays.

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