Sen. Barack Obama has come under fire for appealing to Iowa college students from other states to return early from their winter breaks to participate in the Iowa caucuses on January 3.
In fliers widely distributed on Iowa campuses and reprinted by The Washington Post as part of its online coverage, the Obama presidential campaign tells students: “If you are not from Iowa, you can come back for the Iowa caucus and caucus in your college neighborhood.”
ABC News reports that Mr. Obama reiterated the point himself on Sunday during a campaign stop at Iowa State University, telling a crowd of about 400 students that those spending the holidays outside Iowa “can come back to Ames and caucus.”
Iowa law not only permits students to vote in its caucuses but makes it fairly easy for them to do so, by allowing them to register at voting sites on the day the caucuses are held. Nevertheless, Mr. Obama’s appeal to students has drawn fire from at least one prominent Iowa pundit and from the campaigns of two rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, Christopher J. Dodd and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
In an article headlined “The Illinois Caucus,” David Yepsen, political columnist for The Des Moines Register, questioned whether the Obama campaign’s move was fair or politically smart. “No presidential campaign in memory has ever made such a large, open attempt to encourage students from out of state, many of whom pay out-of-state tuition, to participate in the caucuses,” he wrote. “No other campaign appears to be doing it in this campaign cycle.” The columnist argued that encouraging the participation of people from elsewhere “changes the nature of the event” and may taint a strong Obama showing.
A Clinton campaign spokeswoman, Mo Elleithee, told The Politico, “We are not systematically trying to manipulate the Iowa caucuses with out-of-state people.” The Dodd campaign issued a news release suggesting that the Obama campaign was “scheming to evade either the spirit or the letter of the rules that guide the process.”
Mr. Obama’s campaign has responded by saying there is nothing unusual about Iowa college students’ voting in the caucuses. “Don’t let people tell you that you can’t participate,” the Illinois senator told the crowd at Iowa State.
The latest Des Moines Register poll of likely caucus-goers, conducted late last month, has Mr. Obama as the front-runner among those under the age of 35, with more than twice as much support in that age bracket as any of his rivals. But it’s unclear whether, even with encouragement, many college students from elsewhere will want to make a trip back to their campuses in early January.
