College students on campuses throughout Florida are mobilizing for a big election year, but that doesn't mean casting a ballot will be easy.
"Florida's process is archaic," said Frank Bracco, 19, former director of the Chomp the Vote registration effort on the University of Florida campus in Gainesville. "We need to use technology to our advantage."
Bracco cited the difficulties of figuring out how to register, made more onerous in recent years by legislation requiring picture IDs and signatures that match voting rolls. "I would be discouraged from voting if I wasn't involved with Chomp the Vote because I wouldn't know all the rules."
Chomp the Vote is a nonpartisan effort of the UF student government to increase voter participation among students. Bracco estimated there are at least 10,000-12,000 students registered to vote in Alachua County.
The University of South Florida student government also pushes youth voting, putting a prominent banner for Rock the Vote on its home page.
The biggest problem for campus voting, Bracco said, is that most students are registered to vote in their hometowns and do not request an absentee ballot. And because students normally change addresses with the passing of each school year, those with outdated addresses can hold up the lines at the polls. For students rushing to class or a job, a delay could lead them to blow off voting altogether.
Taking the pain out of registering is the job of Andy Bernstein's organization, HeadCount, which hopes to sign up 100,000 new voters at rock shows this summer, including tours by Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band and John Mayer.
"Convenience is an important factor. [A nonregistered young person says] I didn't know how, or I missed the deadline," said Bernstein, the organization's executive director. "For a young person just getting set up in their lives, dealing with another piece of paperwork is not the easiest thing. We really can address the barriers."
College campuses are also targets for partisan voter registration shenanigans. In 2004's election in Pennsylvania, college students in Pittsburgh who signed a bogus "Legalize Marijuana" petition found their precinct locations had been changed as a result. That same year, on Florida campuses, some students complained they were tricked into registering as Republicans, prompting a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation.
So far this election year none of that sort of thing has been detected. But that doesn't mean the active partisan clubs on Florida campuses aren't working legitimately to increase their side's take of the youth vote.
"I think we're going to see an explosion in the youth vote," said Zach Moller, president of College Democrats at UF. "Our generation wants something different."
Moller, an economics major, has noticed a buzz on campus, even among friends who are not the most politically involved.
"The narrative of change is extraordinarily important," he said. "It's not the same old talk anymore. We experienced the ineptitude of the Bush administration, and we want something different. Barack Obama is embodying that."
Moller attributes an increase in young voters' awareness to television news shows such as Jon Stewart's The Daily Show and its spin-off, The Colbert Report.
There are similar sentiments and hopes for young Republican voting.
"It's exciting to see young people coming out," said Adam D. Smith, president of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans. So far this year, Smith said, that group has grown by about 25 percent a month.
He blames low turnout on younger voters not knowing who to vote for in the past. Today, those voters are better armed with information available on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. He acknowledges that Barack Obama has done a pretty good job of using those tools so far in this election year.
"You've got to talk to young people in their media," Smith said. "[Young voters] are armed with a lot more knowledge and energy. That's energizing youth voters more than previously."
Ben Fry and Amelia Harnish are summer interns at Creative Loafing. Ben is a senior at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg majoring in magazine journalism. Amelia is a junior at the University of Florida majoring in journalism and English. Political Editor Wayne Garcia contributed to this report.
This article appears in Jun 18-24, 2008.