Politics & Society
Strategic Voting
Thousands of college students plan to vote where it counts most
mark.lebetkin@gmail.com
Katie Humphries lives in Edgewater, N.J., and spends her days in New York City. When it comes to voting, though, she is sticking with her hometown of Asheville, N.C.
Jonathan Harper leads a similarly divided life. He is from Ridgewood, N.J., but is casting his ballot where he attends college: in Florida.
They are voting for Barack Obama where it counts most.
College students, Humphries, 26, at New York’s School of Visual Arts, and Harper, 19, at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., both have the right to vote either at home or at school. This often means a choice between a swing state and a foregone conclusion.
Young voters have the lowest turnout, according to census data. But polls indicate that students may vote in record numbers this year—mostly for Obama.
The potential for vote shuffling is significant. Florida, for example, hosts more than 50,000 students from other states, and another 50,000 leave the state to attend college, according to Department of Education statistics compiled by VoteBackHome.com.
More than two-thirds of voting students cast absentee ballots in 2004, according to Tufts University voting expert Peter Levine. If this proportion were to shift even slightly this year, it could make a difference in swing states like Florida or Virginia.
Students could not fail to notice. They’ve encountered websites encouraging strategic voting, organizers trying to scrape up every last vote, increased education about their options and peer pressure.
Harper’s is a case of political savvy. The college sophomore was 7 years old the last time a swing state squeaker did not decide a presidential election. So he registered to vote in Florida as soon as he got back from summer break. “I thought my vote would have more of an influence,” he said.
In student-rich Massachusetts, the Democratic Party sought to export some of the state’s surplus Obama support. The initiative, launched by U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano, has had limited returns—just under 1,000 swing state registrations as of Oct. 16, according to the party’s student outreach coordinator, Pat Johnson. But this effort only represents a fraction of the state’s registrations, said Johnson. “People are just going to be shocked when they see these numbers on Nov. 5,” he predicted.
College towns in hotly-contested Virginia have seen incredible surges in registration, said Scott Keeter, survey director at the Pew Research Center in Washington. He said it was impossible to separate the student vote – let alone tease out which part of it came out of state. “It’s intriguing but not conclusive,” he said.
Where data is lacking, anecdotes abound. Most students at out-of-state-heavy William and Mary College are registered in Williamsburg, said campus Young Democrats President Liz Pedraja. Students want a say in town-gown issues like cohabitation laws, she said, but the few not registered in Virginia hail from other swing states. This is a change from past elections. Not only does Virginia’s new role as a swing state inspire a sense of importance, but Williamsburg also has a new registrar. The previous one denied students’ claims to residency in 2004.
The picture at Virginia Tech is similar. During registration drives, some students were unaware they had a choice, said Young Democrats leader Dan Geroe. Once presented with an option, he found, students needed little convincing. “Virginia is a very close race,” he would tell a student from Maryland, “but we do understand if you feel more connected to your hometown.” Many opted for Virginia.
That could have cut into Obama votes in North Carolina – once solidly Republican, and now considered a swing state.
“I said ‘Stop registering students from North Carolina here!’” said Geroe, who thought they should stay in North Carolina to see if Obama could take a traditionally Republican state.
Registrars in the Virginia towns of Blacksburg and Radford tried to discourage a flood of student registrations there. The Blacksburg registrar issued a warning that changing one’s registration might threaten financial aid, health insurance and parents’ taxes. In Radford, registrar Tracy Howard denied applications from dorm addresses altogether unless the applicant demonstrated a connection to the community.
Both registrars contend they were faced with registrations hastily obtained by third party organizers who did not apprise students of residency rules. They acknowledged that the number of new registrations this year has been exceptional.
Naked manipulation of the system is not the point of strategic voting, said Matt Lerner, co-founder of CountMore.org, an online state-swapping resource. He said his goal was to help students make a valid choice. But he also wants to inspire the question: “Does it make sense in 2008, in a national presidential election, that my vote counts more in one state than in another?”
A movement is afoot to shift college students into swing states to cast their votes. Photo by Julie Sobel