“The ‘V-is-for-Vendetta' scenario,” added Michael
Hagen, a freshman from Lopatcong, referring to a graphic novel and
movie set in a fascist Britain of the future.
In talking to students at Rowan and Richard Stockton College, it might
seem little has changed in their attitudes toward voting. There's
apathy and anger, shrugs and head-shakes, and plenty of smirks and
blank stares when one asks them about their plans to vote.
What's changed is the context and recent history.
In 2004, young voters turned around a 30-year trend of decreased voter
participation. Voter turnout among people ages 18 to 24 increased by
nearly 11 percent from 2000, almost three times as much as that of the
total electorate. The next highest growth was in the 25-to-34 age
bracket.
But that was during a presidential election.
“It was all over the place,” Stockton student Shannon Louis said,
referring to 2004's political activity. “Now, it doesn't even seem like
there's an election going on.”
Control of the U.S. House of Representatives may be at stake, but
there's no president at the top of the ticket. President Bush is here
for two more years, regardless of what happens on Election Day. The
question is whether young voters will come out to vote during a midterm
election.
Southern New Jersey's college campuses have been quiet on that end.
Campaign signs abound elsewhere in the region, more plentiful in some
areas than others. They're nowhere to be seen at Rowan or Stockton.
That doesn't necessarily mean students are ignorant of the ongoing
campaigns or the issues involved, or that the campaigns have forgotten
these places. It's still more than a week before Election Day. And
there are some signs the 2004 vote was not merely a one-time event, but
rather the start of a trend.
Last year, New Jersey's youth voter turnout increased by nearly 20
percent in dense student voting districts, according to the Center for
Information and Research and Civic Learning and Engagement at the
University of Maryland. Virginia saw increases of more than 15 percent.
Both had gubernatorial elections.
A recent voter registration drive at Stockton registered “vanloads of
people” to vote, according to students. The New Voters Project, a
nonpartisan voter registration effort run by Public Interest Research
Group, has been active registering voters at the school. Volunteers for
Democratic U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, who faces a challenge from state
Sen. Tom Kean Jr., R-Union, Morris, Somerset, Essex, were on Rowan's
campus Thursday.
Many of the same old voting barriers to students remain.
If they're registered to vote, most students are registered to vote in
their respective hometowns. That means they can't vote while at school.
They have two options: absentee ballot, or the long drive home to vote
in the midst of classes.
“I have so much work to do,” said Mark Adelung, a senior public health
major at Stockton who hails from Jackson Township, an hour's drive
north of Stockton. “It's hard for me to drive up there just to vote and
come back.”
Many freshmen and sophomores would be voting for the first time and aren't sure where to vote.
“I want to (vote), but I don't really know how to go about it,” said
Denise Bentee, a Rowan freshman from Elmwood Park, Bergen County. “Do I
sneak home to go vote, or do I do it here?
“I know what's going on, but I don't actually know how to find a place to vote.”
Some politically active students at Stockton and Rowan say their
schools simply don't have active campuses. At Rowan, the once-active
Progressive Student Alliance has gone quiet. Student Jenn Mannino
failed in her efforts to organize a political science club. A campus
Democratic club was only recently organized, and even that was
difficult, according to Matthew Browne, one of the chapter's organizers.
“Rowan's kind of a politically apathetic school,” said Jeff Bell, a
senior political science major from Mount Laurel who volunteers for the
Kean campaign and heads the Rowan's College Republicans.
The Rowan voting district consistently has the lowest voter turnout,
according to Browne, who has volunteered for the Democratic Party in
Glassboro, his hometown.
Megan Kerr, a senior at Rowan, won't be driving the 20 miles to her
native Vineland to vote, and neither will Sarah Miller, a Stockton
junior who hails from Wildwood. Each said they don't know enough about
the candidates or issues to vote. Neither indicated any inclination to
learn about them.
“The general population of students, unless it directly affects them,
it's hard to get them out to vote, which is why it's so hard to affect
higher education,” said Browne, a senior studying history and
education. “You're only a student for four years, and then you're in a
different tax bracket, and you have a whole different set of issues.”
And then there are the candidates.
New Jersey's Senate race between Menendez and Kean has been a typical mudslinging affair.
“I can't say that I'll vote, because of the candidates,” said Shaun
Bailey, a junior history major at Rowan. “Same old, same old. They all
say the same thing. They're all corrupt.”
Add to that the fact that many students — particularly Bailey, who grew
quite passionate as he railed about the state of politics — have little
patience for rehearsed stump speeches.
Students are more likely to vote if candidates directly reach out to
them, according to George Washington University's Young Voter
Strategies project. They want to be talked with, not talked at or
talked past.
In 2004, the presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.,
heavily targeted young voters in Wisconsin. Kerry won the
25-and-younger vote 59 percent to 39 percent. If those voters had voted
the same way older voters did, Bush would have won the state, the Young
Voter Strategies project found. In 1998, former wrestler and actor
Jesse Ventura won the Minnesota governor's seat, thanks largely to his
outreach to young voters. Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick won elections
in 2001 and 2005 with increased youth voter turnout. U.S. Sen. Richard
Burr, R-N.C., reached out to students and reaped a big enough portion
of the young, evangelical vote to pull out a close win in 2004.
“I think the big question will be, these last couple of weeks, how much
will candidates reach out to these young people,” said Ben Unger, field
director for the New Voters Project.
“If we don't turn out in 2006, everyone will look at 2004 as a blip on the screen.”
