Des Moines Register
11-15-07
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.
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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-ofstate 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 KiserWacker, 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.
Now campaigns have cell phone banks in Iowa City, staffed in part with students
with flexible schedules, he said.
"They are concerned with, 'Make the calls. Make the calls,' " Hagle said. "One of
the problems on phone calling is it's very difficult to reach students. ... Unless you
get out there and meet people face-to-face on the Pentacrest and classrooms,
it's very difficult to reach out to those voters."
ISU opens campus housing for caucus night
Iowa State University’s Department of Residence will open a floor in Wallace Hall
Jan. 2 through 4 for residents to participate in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. The
opportunity is only open to students who live in ISU housing.
Since many students won’t have access to their closed residence halls over the
semester break, Wallace Hall will provide a central location for those who want to
come back to Ames to participate in the caucuses.
"We believe it is valuable for residents to have the opportunity to participate in
this important political process," said Pete Englin, ISU director of residence.
Caucus housing in Wallace will be available for $19.50 per night. Students who
do not have contracts with the Department of Residence will need to make other
arrangements if they wish to caucus in Ames during the winter break.
Department of Residence staff will communicate this option to students and
provide additional directions on how to reserve caucus housing after
Thanksgiving break.
Youth voter turnout rises in recent years
Eighteen-year-olds were given the right to vote in 1971 in reaction to the fact that
the United States was drafting that age group to fight in the Vietnam War.
Voter turnout surged in the next election, with an 18-to-24 voter turnout rate of 52
percent, said Dianne Bystrom, the director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for
Women and Politics at Iowa State University.
Over the years, voter turnout among young people dropped, falling to 40percent
in 1988, she said.
By the 1990s, MTV started the Rock the Vote campaign in response to attacks
on freedom of speech and artistic expression, Bystrom said. Forty-nine percent
of young people turned out to vote in 1992, in part in response to Rock the Vote,
she said.
Youth voter turnout then decreased to 36 percent in 1996 and 2000, but in 2004
it jumped to its highest point in a decade: 47 percent turnout nationwide. “You are
coming full circle,” Bystrom said. “Young people were given the right to vote in
the ’70s in reaction to Vietnam. A couple of decades later, they are interested in
issues like Iraq.”
Young voters in the 2006 midterm elections nationally leaned toward Democratic
candidates, with nearly six in 10 young voters choosing the Democratic
candidate in the House of Representatives election, a higher rate than the rest of
the population, according to the Center for Information & Research on Civic
Learning and Engagement.
Bystrom said she has heard anecdotes of higher-than-normal numbers of young
people caucusing at campus locations in 2004, but added that achieving high
youth turnout could be tough this year because of the early date of the caucus.
“The student could be in home communities or be out of state on the ski slopes
of Colorado or sunning in Florida,” she said. “The Jan. 3 date I don’t think is a
great date for students and not a great date for university communities overall.”
Student reaction
Some students from Iowa State University interviewed this month about where
they will caucus said they will drive for hours to caucus on campus. Others plan
to attend their hometown caucuses.
NAME: Raeanne Cooks, 24, from San Luis Obispo, Calif.
PARTY Democrat
MOST IMPORTANT ISSUES: She wants the war in Iraq to end, and she wants
health care to be extended to lower-income families. She is also fascinated with
the caucuses as a part of the Iowa tradition. “This state is so important - in the
middle of the country where no one else lives. We don’t have anything like that in
California.”
WHOM SHE IS SUPPORTING: Barack Obama.
WHERE SHE WILL CAUCUS: In Ames, where she lives in an apartment.
NAME: Stephanie Lichter, 20, from Algona.
PARTY Republican.
MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE: Foreign policy. “We have to be right 100 percent of
the time in making sure (terrorists) don’t get through and get us, and they only
have to be right once. And it worries me that some people will go softer on that.
And I guess I don’t ever want to see something like (9/11) again.”
WHOM SHE IS SUPPORTING: Undecided, but interested in Fred Thompson,
Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani.
WHERE SHE WILL CAUCUS: She plans to caucus in Algona.
NAME: Don McDowell, 21, from Sheldon.
PARTY Republican.
MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE: One of the issues he cares most about is illegal
immigration. “When other people are coming to this country illegally and in some
cases getting rewarded for it, I feel a certain disappointment in that, and a
disappointment in government for not taking care of this problem more effectively
and sooner.”
WHOM HE IS SUPPORTING: Undecided, but said he wants to caucus for
someone who is a strong communicator. “I think that’s the biggest downfall of
George Bush. It’s not that he’s a dumb guy. It’s just that he’s an ineffective
communicator of his message.”
WHERE HE WILL CAUCUS: In O’Brien County.
NAME: Teresa Tompkins, 18, from Woodbine.
PARTY Democrat.
MOST IMPORTANT ISSUES: Health care, Iraq and the economy. She wants a
candidate who supports universal health care. “I know a lot of families that have
needed it and can’t afford it.”
WHOM SHE IS SUPPORTING: Leaning toward Hillary Clinton and John
Edwards. “I think they appeal more to common people,” she said.
WHERE SHE WILL CAUCUS: Woodbine.
NAME: Ross Eveland, 20, from Oskaloosa.
PARTY Democrat.
MOST IMPORTANT ISSUES: He is concerned about the rising cost of education
and wants the war in Iraq to end. “I think war is bad any time.”
WHOM HE IS SUPPORTING: John Edwards.
WHERE HE WILL CAUCUS: On ISU’s campus. He will stay with friends in Ames
the night before the caucuses.