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"  Selena Gomez isn&amp;#039;t 18 yet, but that hasn&amp;#039;t stopped her from getting out the teen vote! Since the summer, Selena has been giving teens a voice in UR Votes Count, a nationwide campaign devoted to educating teens on the election. After 150 malls, 42 states, and over 50,000 votes, teens picked Barack Obama for president in Selena&amp;#039;s poll, with 62% of teens voting for Obama and 33% for McCain. On Friday, Seventeen was lucky enough to chat with Selena about UR Votes Count! Why did you decide to get involved with UR Votes Count? I&amp;#039;ve obviously been blessed with the opportunity to pair up with General Growth Properties to do this campaign, because I do have a voice, and a lot of people look up to me, and that&amp;#039;s wonderful. So I want to be able to use that voice as much as I can! Why is it important to you to follow the election, even though you can&amp;#039;t vote? I&amp;#039;m 16 now, but in two years, I&amp;#039;ll have the opportunity to vote. It&amp;#039;s kind of a scary thought to think that in four years, I will be voting for the person that will have to run my country for me, and I want to be prepared for that. What was the UR Votes Count experience like for you on a personal level? It&amp;#039;s just amazing to have kids come up to me saying they made a group night with all their girlfriends and watched the presidential debates together! It&amp;#039;s incredible to know that I can have that kind of impact on someone. Do you talk about politics with your friends? Oh my gosh, yes! Demi [Lovato] and I can go for hours on issues like that. If you make one comment about any candidate, we will sit there for two hours, three hours, arguing. Sometimes we&amp;#039;ll walk away angry at each other, but we&amp;#039;ll just last laugh about it later. Are you sharing who you would vote for in this election? I&amp;#039;m not, because I wouldn&amp;#039;t want to put any thoughts in anyone&amp;#039;s heads, or say you know, because I would vote for this person, you should. Do you like the same candidate as your parents? Sometimes we&amp;#039;ll go back and forth. I think that it&amp;#039;s actually kind of fun to discuss it with my parents when we&amp;#039;re eating dinner or watching TV because I get to learn what they have to say and how their thought process works. Why do you think teens are so excited about this election? I think that a lot of celebrities are getting involved this year, so I think that gets people excited. It shows people that presidential debates are actually fun once you know what they&amp;#039;re talking about. It&amp;#039;s just like watching a game show in a way, for me! In the UR Votes Count poll, 62 percent of teens voted for Barack Obama. Did you see a lot of excitement among younger people for Obama? I actually got a bunch of mixed reviews. A bunch of kids would say, &amp;quot;McCain!&amp;quot; and then some would say, &amp;quot;Obama!&amp;quot; so I honestly did not know who would win the poll. Why do you think Obama is popular with teens, based on the poll? I&amp;#039;m not sure what it is about Obama that [teens] like, but there&amp;#039;s something that he has to offer. It could be about education, or an issue that teens can relate to more, or it could just be that they just all agree on what he has to say. What issues are most important to you in this election? The economy is important to me and my family right now. Education and global warming are big issues for me as well. Have you ever met either of the candidates? No, I haven&amp;#039;t. I would be very star struck I think if I met them! What can teens do after the election to make sure they still have a voice? Don&amp;#039;t stop yourself from being educated. If you like the person who is running the country, I think you should watch how they run it, to the point where you will be able to vote for the next president. Who are you going to watch the election results with? Probably my parents! Are there any other causes, besides educating teens about voting, that are important to you? Yes, I was recently competing for UNICEF&amp;#039;s [2008 Trick-or-Treat campaign] spokesperson, and I freaked out when I got that! I loved those little boxes I would get in school [on Halloween] to go get money for kids. It&amp;#039;s a great cause. What were you for Halloween? June Carter Cash Thanks, Selena! Keep up the great work! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.seventeen.com/life/a2570/selena-gomez-interview-urvotescount/>