The Student Vote Coalition had its work cut out for it this election season.
Not only did the group want to register at least 7,500 University students to vote, it wanted to make sure those students actually voted.
The first part alone may seem lofty enough — 7,500 newly registered voters would be more than any get-out-the-vote effort the University has ever seen. And to some, the latter goal may have seemed like wishful thinking because of the demographic’s reputation for political apathy.
But on Oct. 12, the coalition, a combination of the ASUO and other student groups on campus, had exceeded its goal by registering 7,669 voters. A week removed from the election, student leaders say it is clear the new voters will have an affect on the state legislative process.
ASUO President Adam Petkun, board chair for the Oregon Student Association, spoke before the State Board of Higher Education on Friday and said state legislators were impressed when he told them about the University’s registration drive and get-out-the-vote efforts.
“Their jaws would drop when they heard how many students we registered to vote,” Petkun said.
He said one of the most frequently asked questions from state legislators when talking about student issues is how many students are even registered to vote.
The more politically active students are the more likely state legislatures are to listen to their concerns, and being registered to vote is key to being politically involved, Petkun said.
Future lobbying efforts with state legislatures will bring “anecdotal evidence” of the registration drive’s success, Petkun said.
“The reason we do this is so we can have victories elsewhere,” Petkun said.
ASUO Federal Affairs Coordinator Ashley Rees said the voter registration drive’s success is just the beginning of a major effort by student leaders to make sure student voices are heard.
“Student issues in general will be a priority,” Rees said.
Christina Swartz, who helped coordinate campus get-out-the-vote efforts, said the success of the registration drive will have long-lasting effects on students.
“What happens when we turn 40 and still aren’t voting?” Swartz said.
“What do we do then?”
If citizens become politically active at a young age it can ensure strong political participation from them for the rest of their lives, Swartz said.
Get-out-the-vote efforts focused on contacting all newly registered students and reminding them to get their completed ballot in before the Nov. 2 deadline. Petkun said more than 4,000 phone calls were made in just two days.
Though there is no way of knowing how many of the newly registered voters at the University actually voted, Petkun said it was clear to those making calls and knocking on doors that most students had either already voted or were planning to do so.
“There was definitely a buzz on campus about the elections,” Petkun said.
Nationwide exit polls show the same percentage of 18-29 year olds voted in 2004 as did in 2000. Though more young people voted in this election, University Political Science Professor Joel Bloom said the ratio of young voters to voters over the age of 30 is still the same because more people voted overall.
Bloom, a research associate for the Oregon Survey Research Laboratory, directed the exit polls in Oregon, but said the numbers the polls give may be unreliable, particularly for the 18-29 year old age group.
Because Oregon uses a vote-by-mail system, exit polls in the state take the form of telephone polls. This can be problematic because some people, particularly men, are hard to reach via telephone and even harder to involve in participation.
Bloom said his poll calculated 18-29 year olds made up 13 percent of Oregon voters but the number would probably be closer to the nationwide number of 17 percent had young men not been underrepresented.
Petkun said the numbers given by the exit polls are not the end-all, tell-all of how successful get-out-the-vote efforts were because they don’t capture the level of excitement and increase in political activism that emerged on campus this year.
“Even those numbers can’t completely quantify the success that we had in our youth vote drive,” he said.

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