Caging in on college students–sort of
It’s been a high-pressure week for Jennifer Brunner, Ohio Secretary of State, as she announced a decision regarding voter registration that had Democrats smiling, Republicans frowning, and the country just as focused as ever on this swing state. I’ll be honest and admit that I had never heard the term “vote caging” before reading about this turn of events on Politico. com. Staff writer Ben Adler explains that “voting rights activists” were concerned that direct mailings, required by law, to all registered Ohio voters can “disenfranchise” voters. This is where I personally got a little lost and looked up “vote caging” and got a helpful supplement from Sourcewatch.org which explained that what can happen is that if that mailing regarding the election gets returned to the sender, the intended recipient can be taken off the list of registered voters. This is what is known as “vote caging.”
The article on Politico.com quotes an Ohio State University election law expert, Daniel Tokaji, as explaining that groups that are more likely to move–and therefore have mail from previous addresses get lost/be returned to sender–are also groups that are more likely to lean towards the political left, such as college students and low-income individuals. Hence Republicans are less than thrilled with Brunner’s decision. Ohio is not just any swing state; as a 9/9/08 report on CNN.com notes, no victorious Republican presidential candidate has ever won without winning Ohio and its 20 Electoral College votes.
Between all this electoral college talk and Tokaji’s reference to students being a nomadic group that might miss its mail (but now not lose their place on registered voter lists), I got to thinking about the fact that many colleges of varying size and fame exist in Ohio. I’ll explore political happenings on other campuses in future posts, for the sake of nostalgia I’ll start with Oberlin College. It is logical that the school was at some point on my short list of possible schools since it is, in fact, considered to be a peer institution to my own alma-mater-in-May Occidental College.
Oberlin is liberal. Duh. This year’s infamous rankings by The Princeton Review places it at #14 on the list titled “Birkenstock-wearing, tree-hugging, clove-smoking vegetarians.” Oberlin also landed on the lists of “College with a conscience” and “Best Midwestern Colleges.” The college newspaper, The Oberlin Review, published an article on Friday about students’ strong participation in political activities, particularly voter registration, which is especially interesting in light of the recent news about vote caging. As a staff writer for my own college’s newspaper, I can’t help but shamelessly plug this article on behalf of the Review staff. They point out the obvious, which is that the majority of their students are going to Barack the vote, but note that students are actually involved in a range of political organizations, including the non-partisan Coalition for Oberlin Voters. The most interesting piece of information that I gleaned from this article, however, was that this is the first time that out-of-state students can choose to vote in Ohio and print out online documentation from the Board of Elections to prove residency when they vote.
McCain is currently ahead in national numbers while Obama can claim more electoral votes (see same CNN article as before)–time and OHMYOHIO will tell…
Tags: Democrats, Jennifer Brunner, Oberlin College, Occidental College, Ohio, Ohio State University, Republicans, vote caging, voter registration, voting
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
October 14, 2008 at 4:17 am
[...] in 2004, is a major concern for the current election as well. Republicans have placed the blame on Jennifer Brunner, Ohio’s Secretary of State, for allegedly “favoring” the Democratic Party with her policy decisions. Check out [...]