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The National Student News Service has posted a roundup of materials relating to youth and student voting in this week’s Oregon Democratic primary.
Cue the Dr. Evil jokes — a major Clinton donor secretly offered to give the Young Democrats of America one million dollars if YDA’s two remaining superdelegates endorsed Hillary.
An unnamed “high-ranking official” in YDA tells the Huffington Post that billionaire Clinton supporter Haim Saban made the offer in a phone call to Young Dems president David Hardt in advance of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries.
YDA leadership is said to have “agonized” over the proposal, which would have increased their operating budget for the year by a third. Support for Barack Obama was “overwhelming” within YDA, however, and the organization ultimately turned the money down.
The YDA has three superdelegates. Crystal Strait recently announced her support for Obama, while Francisco Domenech endorsed Clinton in January. Hardt, the group’s only uncommitted super, stated on Friday that he will make no endorsement “until every young voter has made their voice heard.”
Update: According to Wikipedia, Saban is the 102nd richest person in America … and the co-author of the Inspector Gadget theme song.
As we noted last week, the US Supreme Court recently upheld Indiana’s strict voter ID law, raising concerns about the disfranchisement of out-of-state college students. Reports from yesterday’s primary voting suggest that those concerns were at least partially warranted.
College students often vote in their college communities but maintain driver’s licenses from their states of origin. Under Indiana law, out-of-state licenses are not valid ID for voting.
Public university students with out-of-state licenses were able to vote without incident yesterday, as their college ID cards are regarded as “state-issued” identification for the purposes of the law. Student PIRG poll-watchers did, however, report a number of incidents in which private-college students were turned away. One PIRG representative further noted that news of the stringent ID requirements likely kept some students away from the polls altogether.
A new Harvard University study finds a major uptick in youth political engagement. The study’s authors expect to find “significant, if not, record” increases in youth voter turnout this fall, and show Obama with commanding leads against both Clinton and McCain.
Much more at the above link.
University of Illinois junior Frank Calabrese, 20, lost his campaign for student body president earlier this month. So now he’s running for the Illinois House of Representatives.
Illinois House District 103 includes the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana, and nearly half its constituents are UI students. The district has been represented by Democrat Naomi Jakobsson since 2002, and Calabrese is running as the nominee of the Republican party.
The UI student body president is selected by the campus student senate. Calabrese, a three-term student senator, placed last in a three-way race for the presidency in an April 3 election.
studentactivism.net 
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