Prof’s Web site prompts students to vote strategically

Ryan Haggerty

September 27, 2004

Elizabeth Graber is proof that all politics is not local.

Graber, a Weinberg sophomore and Minneapolis, Minn., native, is registered to vote in Minnesota, not in Illinois, because her vote will have a bigger impact on the presidential election if she votes absentee, she said. Illinois is considered a lock for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, while Minnesota’s electoral votes are expected to be up for grabs.

“I recognize that although I live in Evanston most of the year, the presidential election is most important right now,” Graber said.

Michael Peshkin, a professor in Northwestern’s mechanical engineering department, couldn’t agree more. His Web site, www.swingstatevoter.com, encourages college students from swing states who attend school in non-swing states to vote at home by absentee ballot. Northwestern has 2,352 students who fall into that category, Peshkin said.

‘There’s 300,000 students who are from swing states, but they’re going to school in non-swing states, and I think they’d have a lot more impact in their home state than in their school’s state,” he said.

Students can greatly affect an election because of their ability to transfer their votes from states that are projected to elect a particular candidate to states that are in the middle of an electoral firestorm, Peshkin said.

“Florida is going to be a close election,” Peshkin said. “Illinois is not going to be a close election. Students are special. They can optimize and vote where it is most effective.”

If a large number of students with the ability to vote in swing states do so, some of those states could take unexpected turns in November, said Jack Doppelt, an associate professor in the Medill School of Journalism and the co-author of “Nonvoters: America’s No-Shows” with fellow Medill Prof. Ellen Shearer.

“It could have a huge effect on the election,” Doppelt said. “Voting absentee in states that matter is a smart way to do it. I would do it myself.”

Peshkin’s Web site provides links to absentee ballot registration forms for 19 states that he has classified as undecided. About 40 colleges have put up posters promoting the Web site in an effort to prevent students from missing absentee ballot application deadlines, Peshkin said.

“It’s a busy time, the beginning of school,” he said. “A lot of the registration deadlines are Oct. 4. Even a pretty politically motivated student may not check until mid-October, when it’s too late.”

Doppelt expects this election to have an abnormally high turnout among college students, not because they are more interested in politics, but because the importance of voting in this election has seeped into pop culture, he said.

“I think there is a buzz going on that students will vote just like they would check in on a movie or a concert,” Doppelt said. “They’re caught up in a buzz that is appealing to the entertainment part of their brain.”

But Kelly Rosenfeld, a Weinberg sophomore from Miami decided to vote in her home state because of political realities, not pop culture pressure.

“Since (Illinois) is more inclined in the one direction, it’s not as crucial for me to vote here as it is in Florida,” she said.

College students such as Rosenfeld are variables that could throw off election predictions, Doppelt said.

“The campaigns are strategic,” he said. “There’s no reason you shouldn’t be.”

Reach Ryan Haggerty at [email protected].