If official predictions ring true on Nov. 2, a record-breaking crowd at a Thursday John Kerry rally could be matched on Election Day by record-high voter turnout numbers.
“I hope this isn’t the only record we smash,” Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, said about the Kerry event, adding it was the biggest political rally in Wisconsin history. “I hope that we also smash a record with voter turnout on Election Day.”
As many as 75 percent of Wisconsin citizens could show up to the polls Tuesday, according to New Voters Project State Campus Director Jessy Tolkan.
The student vote in particular is set to surpass past voting numbers for the 18-to-24-year-old demographic, with a projected record turnout for the University of Wisconsin. A significant push of activity by candidates and campaigns, like the Democratic presidential nominee’s campus appearance less than a week before the election, could add to a semester-long “grassroots” mobilization effort to get out the student vote.
Tolkan said the high expectations for student turnout at the polls has prompted candidates to make a number of visits to college towns like Madison.
“We think it’s extremely significant that a candidate for president was on a student campus among student housing trying to get out the vote,” Tolkan said, adding there is a reciprocal relationship between attention candidates pay to young people and the expected influence the student vote will have at the polls.
Some polling locations on campus may be stretched to their limits Nov. 2 to accommodate the large flow of student voters, according to Tolkan. Volunteers will be stationed at polling sites across campus to make sure students stay in line and are not “turned off” by a long wait.
Students may be forced to wait in lines for as long as two to three hours, said chair of College Democrats Liz Sanger.
“We are expecting long lines,” she said, adding students should still make sure they cast their ballots despite the wait. “[B]ut we are expecting students to stay in those lines and vote.”
It is those high projections for student turnout prompting political and non-partisan organizations alike to urge individuals to cast their ballots early.
“For every person who votes early, it means one less person in line on Election Day,” Sanger said.
Indeed, Wisconsinites have been casting their ballots earlier and in larger numbers than ever before. The City Clerk’s Office reported more than 1,200 people voted Thursday before and after the Kerry rally, and nearly 2,000 voted the day before. The office has also already processed 20,000 absentee ballots, and is expecting triple that number by the time all election results are in. By contrast, only 6,700 absentee ballots were counted in Wisconsin during the entire 2000 election.
“It’s going to be a record number of people voting,” Sharon Christensen, Madison Deputy Clerk, said. She added many people are choosing to vote in Wisconsin rather than send absentee ballots back to their home states.
“Because this is such a swing state, people are choosing to vote here instead of their home state,” she said.
