RICHMOND, Sept. 14 -- Jerry Falwell Jr., chancellor of socially conservative Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., is launching an ambitious drive to get the school's 10,500 students registered to vote, and he's promising to make buses available to shuttle them to the polls on Election Day.

Falwell, son of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, said he plans to distribute forms at dormitories and in classrooms tomorrow to make sure students register before Virginia's Oct. 6 deadline.

Falwell, whose father founded the school in 1971 and went on to become a leader in efforts to get evangelicals more involved in politics, said he wants in-state and out-of-state students to register in Virginia. The turnout at Liberty could make a crucial difference in this year's election, he said.

"Wouldn't it be something if Liberty's votes were enough to change which presidential candidate won Virginia and maybe even the presidency itself," Falwell said in a statement announcing the initiative.

With Virginia emerging as a crucial state in the presidential race, frantic campaigns are underway at colleges across the state to get first-time voters to register and to persuade those registered in another state to register in Virginia.

Last week, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's campaign dispatched comedian and actor Marlon Wayans and actress Tatyana Ali to the University of Richmond, Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville to urge students to register.

"We are seeing a lot of enthusiasm for Senator Obama among this group, and we are going to continue to register voters up until October 6," said Clark Stevens, an Obama spokesman.

But Falwell's efforts to register Liberty students, many of whom might be inclined to support GOP nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), may be an unprecedented step by such a high-ranking college official, political observers say.

On Election Day, Liberty also plans to cancel classes. According to the statement, Falwell is planning "an all-day concert" on campus that will morph into an "election party" when the returns come in.

Falwell is not exaggerating when he says his efforts could shape the outcome of the presidential race in Virginia. Two recent statewide elections -- the U.S. Senate race in 2006 and the attorney general's race in 2005 -- were decided by fewer than 10,000 votes.

The widespread practice of students’ registering to vote at their college address has set off a fracas in Virginia, a battleground state in the presidential election.

Late last month, as a voter-registration drive by supporters of Senator Barack Obama was signing up thousands of students at Virginia Tech, the local registrar of elections issued two releases incorrectly suggesting a range of dire possibilities for students who registered to vote at their college.

The releases warned that such students could no longer be claimed as dependents on their parents’ tax returns, a statement the Internal Revenue Service says is incorrect, and could lose scholarships or coverage under their parents’ car and health insurance.

After some inquiries from students and parents, and more pointed questions from civil rights lawyers, the state board of elections said Friday that it was “modifying and clarifying” the state guidelines on which the county registrar had based his releases.

Student-registration controversies have been a recurring problem since 1971, when the 26st Amendment lowered the voting age to 18 from 21, and despite a 1979 ruling by the United States Supreme Court that students have the right to register at their college address.

Virginia is not the only state with murky guidelines. South Carolina’s voter-registration site, for example, says students who want to register to vote at their college address must demonstrate “a present intention to remain in the community.”

“There’s no issue for snowbirds who live in Iowa but fly to Florida for the winter,” said Sujatha Jahagirdar, program director of the Student Public Interest Research Group’s New Voters Project. “One demographic group, like students, shouldn’t have to overcome a special hurdle to vote. We impose all the responsibilities of citizenship on students, and we have to provide them with the privileges of citizenship, too.”

Ms. Jahagirdar said Virginia’s warnings were profoundly misleading. “We have been registering young voters for 25 years,” she said. “We registered 500,000 young voters in 2004, the majority on college campuses, and we’ve never heard of a single one who lost health insurance, scholarship or tax status because of where they registered to vote.”

In Virginia, the county registrar first issued an alarming release on Aug. 25, and two days later a slightly toned-down version using language taken directly from the state Board of Elections’ Web site.

That site says students can determine their legal residence, but advises them to consider certain questions. “Are you claimed as a dependent on your parents’ income tax return?” the site asks. “If you are, then their address is probably your legal residence.”

The site also tells students to check whether their coverage under their parents’ health or automobile insurance, or their scholarship, will be affected by changing their residence.

Civil rights lawyers say these guidelines are problematic and could infringe on students’ rights.

“What the state Board of Elections has on its Web site, to me, sounds like it is discouraging students from registering at their school address,” said Jon Greenbaum, director of the Voting Rights Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Indeed, the Montgomery County registrar, E. Randall Wertz, said several students had canceled their local registration over their worry about the possible consequences. Mr. Wertz said he had issued the release to try to dispel confusion and explain what he believed to be the consequences of choosing a college address as a primary residence.

“My understanding of state law has been that by declaring you’re voting here, you’re saying this is your primary residence, your domicile, and that while you can have many abodes or residences, you can only have one domicile,” Mr. Wertz said. “And if this is your primary residence, you have to register your vehicle here, charge your driver’s license to here and so on. That’s been the interpretation at state training sessions.”

Kevin Griffis, the Obama campaign’s Virginia spokesman, said the release appeared to be a good-faith effort to convey state guidelines, not a politically motivated effort to stop voting by students.

Mr. Wertz said the initial release had been written by an intern whom he asked to summarize the guidelines. Although the second release used the state’s precise language, he said, it still left room for confusion. In other counties, registrars have refused to accept dormitory addresses as residences. But so far, the state has not set clear standards.

“Different registrars around the state interpret it differently,” he said. “We’ve asked for more guidance from the state legislature, but they haven’t wanted to deal with it.”

Mr. Greenbaum’s Voting Rights Project has been involved in other student-registration cases. Last fall, in Statesboro, Ga., in a hotly contested city council race, there were challenges to the registration of about 1,000 Georgia Southern University students who had used dormitory addresses. “We threatened suit, but the issue went away when they figured out that the challenges weren’t going to affect the results of the election,” Mr. Greenbaum said.

In 2003, in Waller County, Tex., the district attorney wrote a column in a local newspaper threatening to prosecute students at Prairie View A&M, a historically black university, for illegal voting. The project sued, and the district attorney backed down.

By Jose Antonio Vargas

Whoever wins the White House come November, this much is true: Web-savvy young voters will have been a crucial voting bloc.

The 2008 primary campaign, and especially the protracted and historic Democratic battle, buried the tired old adage that young people don't vote. Turnout among voters under 30 has increased since the 2004 election, and young voters now, by large margins, lean Democratic (as books such as "Youth to Power" convincingly argue). Two recent studies by non-partisan organizations -- by CIRCLE (The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement), released Friday, and by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, released today -- outline the growing trend.

Some 6.5 million voters under 30 voted in this year's primaries and caucuses, according to data compiled by CIRCLE. That's a record figure, said CIRCLE director Peter Levine, and the first time the youth vote has risen in three consecutive election cycles (2004, 2006 and 2008) since the voting age was lowered to 18 in 1971. CIRCLE's data shows that the overall national youth voter turnout rate almost doubled in eight years; it was 9 percent in 2000 and grew to 17 percent this year. In addition, of the 17 states in which primary exit polls were conducted in both 2000 and 2008, 16 saw increases in youth voter turnout, with some states showing a triple or quadruple jump. In the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, for example, the youth vote comprised 18 and 16 percent, respectively, of the total share of voters.

New youth activism group plans first 'Endless Summer Fest'
By RICK de YAMPERT
Entertainment Writer

 Turning Point Youth Collective, a new, local nonprofit youth organization, was created to "provide empowerment to the 16- to 25-year-old age range" and get them "civically involved," says co-founder Kristina Muvceski. The collective hopes to reach that age group "on their terms, which we consider to be the arts and activism," says the 22-year-old Daytona Beach resident, college student and single mother. Turning Point will stage its first large-scale event, "Endless Summer Fest," on Saturday at City Island Park. The free event will feature 18 music acts, the comedy troupe Random Acts of Insanity, young artists and "skill sharers" including a pottery wheel demonstration and DIY bicycle maintenance. To read the full article click here.