With the presidential election looming closer every day, effortsto move the younger portion of the electorate to the voting boothsin November have been raised a notch across the nation.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 36 percent of the 18-to 24-year-olds age group was represented in the 2000 presidentialelection, the lowest turnout of any other demographic.
Efforts to increase voter registration at Tufts are underway.According to freshman Dan Grant, he and other Tufts studentsinvolved with United Leaders went to several dormitory halls lastsemester and registered 60 students.
United Leaders is a national non-partisan action tank, createdby former Tufts students, which tries to increase college students'political involvement.
This semester, Grant is working with the "Tufts 1200" project,which aims to register 1,200 new voters at the University within ayear.
Grant said Harvard has a 100 percent voter registration ratethanks to registering students at freshmen orientation. "Tufts 1200plans to do the same thing at this year's freshman orientation andmy goal is to have a 100 percent registration rate here at Tufts infour years by focusing on freshmen," Grant said.
The federal agency purports that this may be due to the factthat young adults -- especially those in their twenties -- are themost transient and must re-register to vote after each move,possibly leading to lower registration and voting levels.
Toby Jag, a San Francisco-based organizer at PunkVoter.com, saidthat early polls have shown that 18- to 30-year-olds are the mostundecided when it comes for whom they are going to vote inNovember.
"PunkVoter.com is trying to raise awareness of the importance ofvoting because we've got to worry about the future," he said.
Jag's group is behind the "Rock Against Bush" tour, whichstarted in late March and has hit key swing states and registeredapproximately 200 new voters at each show. Since Punkvoter.com isan IRS-registered 527 political organization, they cannot advocatea candidate, but Jag says that the group does "raise awarenessabout the Bush administration's destructive nature and failures."IRS 527 organizations are income-tax exempt.
According to political science professor Jeffrey Berry, "Collegevoters primarily vote the way their parents vote. The connectionbetween parent and child results in a continuity of values."
As a result, Berry believes that college students and otheryoung voters are not all that different from other voterdemographics. "Whatever issues are moving the nation will movecollege-aged voters," he said.
President of Tufts Republicans Philipp Tsipman, however, feelsthere is a difference between the college electorate and adultvoters. "I think college students are not really issue voters --they vote more based on character and leadership [of thecandidates]," he said. A lot of college students would vote for acandidate even if they disagree with his or her political position"if they judge the candidate to have a good character.
President of Tufts Democrats Adam Blickstein agreed. "Youngvoters want a president that the nation can trust to tell the truthand be candid about what's really influencing the decisions made atthe White House," he said.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has embarked on atour of university campuses and held press conferences specificallyaimed at college press in an attempt to garner support from thisseemingly untapped source of voting power.
According to Berry, however, though Kerry's emphasis on collegevoters is commendable, he does not believe it will significantlysway the opinions of the college demographic.
Tsipman says that despite his own confidence in the incumbent'sre-election, it is still too early to call. "It's politics and itreally depends on what is going to transpire over the next months,"he said. "I mean, who would have expected Kerry to be on the ballotat all before [the Iowa caucuses]?"
Blickstein believes that more young people will vote inNovember. "2000 was the more typical election because it wasn't acrisis election -- the mood of the country was pretty much staticand I think in 2004 you're going to see a more polarized atmosphereand a greater sense of urgency, especially in the young voter."
Leora Hanser, the executive director of the New DemocracyProject, a non-profit and non-partisan organization based out ofNew York City agrees. She said that most of today's collegestudents remember the close 2000 election, and will vote this fall."The particularly progressive, galvanized population realizes thatthere were only 537 votes that stood between Gore and Bush," shesaid.
Hanser said that the two issues that will most resonate withcollege voters this year are the war in Iraq and the candidates'stances on social issues.
"College students are more insulated from the economy thanadults," she said. "Seniors who will soon be hunting around in thejob market will feel the effects of the economy more than otherundergraduates."
Hanser, who ran Columbia University's Voter Empowerment Projectfrom 1996 to 1999 while a student at Barnard College said, "Thefirst thing I used to tell people who asked me why I was doing allof this at Columbia was that we are so lucky to have this right [tovote] and we have an obligation as American citizens to takeadvantage of this as soon as we turn 18."
