Top Iowa Story: Early Caucus Could Cut Student Participation

http://tpmelectioncentral.com/2007/11/top_iowa_story_early_caucus_could_cut_student_participation.php

Top Iowa Story: Early Caucus Could Cut Student Participation
By Eric Kleefeld - November 15, 2007, 11:11AM

Here's today's key story out of the Iowa local press: The Des Moines Register has a feature on a major difficulty posed by this cycle's January 3 caucus — specifically that student participation, which was 3.9% of the Democratic caucus in 2004, will be seriously diminished because of the winter vacation.

Some organizers are pushing to keep college dorms open during the break, and are refocusing their efforts specifically on in-state students as opposed to out-of-staters who would otherwise be legally qualified to vote in Iowa.

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http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071115/NEWS09/711150391/-1/caucus


Early date causes changes in mobilizing youth vote

By LISA ROSSI • REGISTER AMES BUREAU • November 15, 2007


Ames, Ia. - Efforts to inspire, encourage and cajole young Iowa voters to attend the 2008 presidential caucuses have lost some - but not all - of their steam with the news that Iowa's marquee event will occur when most college students are away on winter break.

Young voter participation, on a long national decline since the Vietnam War era, had begun to perk up in 2004 and 2006. Advocates of youth voting had hopes of fanning the flame in a year with an open presidential race drawing large fields of candidates.

Since the Iowa Democrats and Republicans have moved caucuses up from Jan. 14 to Jan. 3 to protect the event's first-in-the-nation status, campus organizers have been working to adapt:

- Students have started to push campuses to keep dormitories open for the Jan. 3 caucuses, a suggestion some campus officials embrace and others reject as too costly and unsafe.

- Some students involved in voter mobilization efforts have shifted their focus to recruiting students who grew up in Iowa. That takes attention away from out-of-state students, who in past years would caucus as Iowa residents living on campus while school was in session. This year, they would have to travel long distances to caucus at their Iowa campus locations.

- Students and professors who push for the youth vote are at odds over whether 2007 and 2008 mobilization strategies should include pitches on the Web and on cell phones or whether groups should spend more time gathering promises to caucus or support a particular candidate face-to-face.

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If a student wants to participate in the caucus, what is stopping them unless they are Back Home in Indiana.

It is Iowa caucus and should be attended by Iowa residents and students alike.

go visit families. What about them? I think it's too close to Christmas and makes the playing field uneven.

But they are not playing it that way.

Keeping the dorms open isn't going to correct that one regardless. The story makes it about the students when the caucus belongs to the citizens of Iowa.

because kids would be home on holiday break.

Jeez, that old glass--half empty, half full???????

I think the challenge is if they get shitfaced at New Years, and are still badly hung over a few days later...or if they just do that "unmotivated" thing that some young people do.

Video game, or caucus? Video game, or caucus? Which shall I choose????

She lived in Ames when she was a student an Iowa State. She was an active Democrat there, and a caucus leader.

She thinks it will cut participation. Lots of students are registered voters where they go to school. They cannot come back early if they have no place to stay. Some of them cannot come back early for a variety of other reasons, including transportation arrangements, family vacations and jobs.

They will have to open some dorms, though, at least temporarily and partially. Her caucus met in a dorm. Her caucus was not just students, either. Some of the caucus participants were students, employees of the school, and people who just lived in Ames. She liked the way they treated each other's opinions with equal weight and respect. Iowans take their politics seriously.

If it had been her, she could have gotten back to Ames for the caucuses. We live in Illinois, but we have property and family in Grundy County. But how many people will be as motivated as my politically active daughter?

The truth is, I have three children who have just left that age group. I don't believe all the stories about them not voting. And I am not basing that on just my kids and their friends. The youth voted in 2004. I wonder if this is just an added benefit: cut the youth vote and change the results, along with preserving the first in the nation status. I am convinced that cutting the youth vote will hurt Kucinich the most. I am not a Kucinich supporter, because I am still undecided. But I wonder if this whole thing has been thought through carefully enough to satisfy everyone.

p.s. Stop putting down the 18-24 year olds. I see a lot of good and a lot of hope in that demographic.

I am not "putting down" young people. Not all of them get out and actually DO vote. They SAY they will, and then they don't go.

I did a survey of my nephew's pals, about twenty of them, all of voting age at the 04 election, here in political, active MA. They're smart, all of them, excellent students, politically aware, concerned, anti-war, don't want a draft, now seniors in college or recent grads.

Fewer than HALF of them bothered to vote--in fact, it was about a third. ALL of them intended to, but "life" got in the way--had to work, forgot, was far from polling place, so-and-so had the car, excuse after excuse.

So don't insist I'm "putting down" when I am stating fact.

I hope they DO turn out. It's their future, after all.