Early date changes youth-voting efforts

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

- 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.

About 5,000 18- to 24-year-olds participated in the Democratic caucus of 2004 - about 3.9 percent of the 124,000 total caucusgoers that year, according to the Iowa Democratic Party.

Republican Party of Iowa officials said they have no numbers of college-age participation in 2000, the most recent year Iowa's GOP presidential caucuses were held.

Candidates would be more likely to hear and consider the concerns of young Iowans if they turned out in greater numbers at the caucuses, advocates say.

Young people in the 2006 midterm elections were more likely to disapprove of the war in Iraq than older voters, and more likely to be dissatisfied with the Bush administration, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

The New Voters Project Iowa caucus mobilization effort, called "Rock the Caucus," aims to recruit 5,000 young people to attend the caucuses. It will do that by enlisting 250 students deemed "rock stars" to persuade 20 of their friends to caucus, said Sujatha Jahagirdar, program director of the student Public Interest Research Group New Voters Project.

Rock the Caucus also involves the Iowa secretary of state and Rock the Vote, a young voter mobilization effort founded in the 1990s by recording artists concerned about freedom of speech.

Stacey Wilson, 19, is one of the caucus "rock stars" in charge or recruiting her classmates at Drake University to promise to show up on caucus night.

She acknowledged that her new "rock star" status has come with disappointments.

Some people tell Wilson, a sophomore, they don't want to participate, because they would simply support anyone other than the current president.

"It scares me - they think it doesn't matter," she said. "It's a lazy thing that students are doing. ... I know our generation is the first in history that is most likely not to do better than their parents. It surprises me people are not more concerned."

Wilson, from Appleton, Wis., has also backed off of recruiting out-of-state students from Drake to caucus, because most of them will be gone over winter break. A Drake adviser has told Wilson it would be really expensive to open campus during the caucuses, she said.

"I've not heard anything back," she said.

Drake officials said this week they have recently decided to study how they would accommodate the housing needs of students who want to come back and caucus when campus is closed.

Officials at Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa said they would make space available for dorm-dwellers who want to come back, stay the night and caucus. Grinnell College also has plans to open a campus building, equipped with showers, for the 24-hour time period surrounding the caucuses, where students can camp out in sleeping bags.

University of Iowa staff said they will not open any campus housing for caucusgoers, because it would be difficult to provide staff for a building with so few people.

"We wouldn't open the building and man that for one person," said Carrie Kiser-Wacker, U of I assistant to the director of university housing.

She added, "If we had empty space like Iowa State and UNI, and could consolidate them in one building, that would be terrific, but we just don't have that."

Some campus party activists are also pulling back from recruiting their peers to caucus this year.

Amanda Halfacre, an ISU senior from Dallas, Texas who is president of ISU Democrats, said group members have in past years spent the day of the caucus calling students urging them to show up. That won't happen this year, because the students won't know where to reach other students.

She said the group will send out a mass e-mail letting students know they can register the day of the caucus.

Some student activists are trying to overcome the disappointment of the new caucus date by pointing to the new power of the Web. Since 2004, Facebook has infiltrated Iowa campuses, and Internet fundraising and campaigning have advanced beyond a novelty for campaigns. The social networking site and others like it have also moved into the mainstream.

Don McDowell, an ISU senior from Sheldon, said building up student interest on social networking Web sites like Facebook will be more effective in 2007 and 2008 than the past practice of handing out literature in central campus locations.

"I think they have their iPod in their ears, their cell phone to their ear," said McDowell, also co-chairman of Iowa Federation of College Republicans. "They are off thinking of their next class, the test they failed, or why their girlfriends just dumped them."

He said students interested in persuading their peers to vote could instead choose creative pitches on the Web, such as filming a video reminding them to vote and blasting it all over the Internet.

He also said it's not uncommon for students to check Facebook 10 times a day, a reality that could be used on Jan. 3, when potential voters could be barraged with messages about the caucuses.

Other organizers still tout the value of old-fashioned, face-to-face networking.

Jimmy Centers is the student chairman for Students for Rudy Giuliani at the University of Iowa, which has 200 members. He said the group hands out tiny pieces of paper campaign literature in an effort to enlist enough students to make the chapter the largest for Giuliani in the country.

He said the tactic caters to the "fast-paced" college atmosphere, where students are on the go.

That is in addition to messages the student Giuliani chapter sends out to its Facebook group, which he says also has several hundred members.

Tim Hagle, a U of I associate political science professor and adviser to the Iowa Federation of College Republicans, said he is trying to persuade student groups supporting a particular candidate to be more visible on campus.

Hagle recalled the 2000 caucuses, when he was the faculty adviser for the U of I student group supporting George W. Bush. He said clusters of students involved in the campaign gathered in a central part of campus.

He would watch the group grow, as students would pull in friends from their dorm and other parts of their lives.

The Bush student supporters even made friends with rivals: "We got along great with the (Bill) Bradley people," Hagle said.

"They know each other, so they can stand out and talk, kid us back and forth," he said. "It's that face-to-face communication that really gets the message out. I'm trying to get them out there a little bit more."

Those were the days when cell phones weren't as prevalent, and for students to participate in a phone bank, they had to travel to Des Moines or Cedar Rapids, he said.