Young Activists Furious With Clinton, Dodd
by Ben Adler
Many youth activists are furious with the campaigns of Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) for suggesting that college students who did not grow up in Iowa should not caucus there in January - and they are delivering that message both publicly and privately.
“It’s terrible to have candidates making misleading statements about whether or not students can caucus,” said Alexandra Acker, executive director of the Young Democrats of America.
“I’m very worried about the caucus-day implications of this,” Acker said, concerned that discouraging students from caucusing will make an existing problem worse. “Students are disenfranchised at higher rates to begin with.”
Young Voter PAC, another Democratic youth organization, has also responded aggressively. The political action committee, which works with Democratic candidates to engage young voters, founded the Facebook group “Hey Clinton, Stop Telling Young Voters to Stay Home.”
Rock the Vote issued a statement encouraging students from out of state to vote. Student PIRGs Young Voters Project put out a release from a number of its student leaders in Iowa saying, “We live here in Iowa for the majority of the year. … To say that students who didn’t grow up in Iowa, but who now live here, shouldn’t have the choice to participate in the caucuses is blatant voter disenfranchisement.”
The argument centers on whether to encourage Iowa college students from out of state to caucus in Iowa - as the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is doing - or to frown at it, as the Clinton and Dodd campaigns have hinted at.
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http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/14/5823/