College students are young, have little or no history of voting, and are residentially mobile, which makes them a population in great need of registering to vote. Universities have a civic, pedagogical, and legal obligation to register their students to vote. In 2006, we conducted a controlled experiment across 16 college campuses to test the effi cacy of classroom presentations to increase voter registration. The 25,256 students across more than 1,026 classrooms were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (1) a control group receiving no presentation; (2) a presentation by a professor; and (3) a presentation by a student volunteer. Verifying registration and voter turnout from a national voter database, we found that both types of presentations increased overall registration by 6 percentage points and turnout rates by approximately 2.6 percentage points. These results demonstrated that universities can take simple steps to engage their students in politics.

This project examines the effectiveness of a nonpartisan voter mobilization drive in Indiana's fiercely contested Second Congressional District. A student-based, nonpartisan voter mobilization coalition conveyed nonpartisan get-out-the-vote messages through door-to-door canvassing in three South Bend precincts on the weekend before the November 2002 election. These get-outthe vote efforts took place during a competitive election season-one that included door-to-door partisan campaign efforts by interest groups, political parties, and candidate campaigns. While the nonpartisan mobilization campaign did little to increase the likelihood of voting among older voters, it had a strong effect on voters younger than thirty-the voters least likely to be contacted by partisan campaigns.

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