More than 600 students have registered to vote in the Nov. 4 presidential election so far through the efforts of a nonpartisan student coalition aimed at increasing political awareness on campus.
The group, NU Decides, dubbed this week "Blitz Week," revving up voter recruitment efforts in anticipation of the Oct. 4 registration deadline set by many states. NU Decides set up tables at The Rock, Norris University Center and the Technological Institute for students to register to vote and send away for absentee ballots. The effort ends today.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 47 percent of voters age 18 to 24 voted in the 2004 presidential election, compared with 72 percent of voters age 55 and older. And while 79 percent of older Americans were registered voters, only 58 percent of eligible youth had filled out their paperwork.
Kim Castle, a Weinberg sophomore and NU Decides' voter registration coordinator, hopes the group can help reverse that deficit.
"If we can get college students out in record numbers, we have a real chance to show politicians that we care about politics and that they should care about what we think," Castle said.
The group is particularly geared towards registering voters from the so-called "battleground states."
Twenty-six percent of Northwestern students are from swing states, Castle said. While they have the opportunity to register in Illinois, NU Decides encourages voters to consider casting their ballots from their home states, where polls indicate they may matter more.
"In Iowa, if three more people had voted for Kerry in each precinct, Kerry would have carried the state," said Andrew Leff, a Weinberg sophomore. "In non-battleground states, your vote matters in a general sense. In swing states where it's really close, one or two voters can make a pretty big difference."
NU Decides is part of a wider program that has spread to more than a dozen schools across the country. The broader organization, VoteBackHome.com, was created by NU Professor Michael Peshkin in collaboration with LongDistanceVoter.org, and can be found in various forms at schools such as Stanford University, Vassar College and Cornell University.
Peshkin tried to establish a similar program in 2004 but had little success. He reworked the program after realizing that face-to-face registration efforts work better than electronic endeavors.
"There's been all sorts of e-mail flying around, encouraging people to register and get absentee ballots, but what really works statistically is table- and dorm-storming, real person-to-person contact," Peshkin said.
Jen DeNeal, 21, worked with Peshkin this past week to establish a similar group at Loyola University Chicago. The success of both the NU and Loyola organizations is due to the ease with which students can register, she said.
"(Peshkin's) materials and his program make voting very accessible, very easy," DeNeal said. "I'm able to say, 'Fill out this paperwork and I'll mail it in for you,' which is wonderful because voter registration, and especially absentee ballot registration, is ridiculously hard."
Like Loyola's organization, NU Decides wants to make registration as easy and accessible as possible so that college students' voices are taken into account. Jilian López, a Weinberg junior and a coordinator for the group, believes that students have a unique perspective that needs to be acknowledged.
"There's so much intelligence that is usually confined to the classroom, and voting is a great way for us to utilize all the things that we learn," Lopez said. "We can use the tools we learn here to effect real-world change, and that's very important for students to realize. We can be leaders right now, in college."
For more information on voter registration, visit govoteabsentee.org or check your state's Web site.
e-blass@northwestern.edu
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