By Libby Nelson

A study of voter-registration efforts at Northwestern University has concluded that students make strategic choices about where to vote, noting that students from swing states in the 2008 presidential election overwhelmingly chose to cast absentee ballots rather than to register to vote near the campus.

A report on the study, published today by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, at Tufts University, was based on a student-sponsored voter-registration drive in the fall of 2008. Students who registered through the drive were given a choice of voting in Illinois, where Northwestern is located, or in their home states. Students conducting the registration drive often urged students from swing states to consider registering to vote at home, where their votes would presumably have a greater impact than in Illinois, President Obama's home state and a state he was expected to win easily.

Students who were not from swing states chose to vote absentee rather than register to vote locally by a two-to-one ratio, the study found, and students from swing states chose absentee ballots over registering in Illinois by an eight-to-one ratio. The turnout rate was high for both groups: 79 percent of students who registered to vote in Illinois cast a ballot, and 84 percent of those who received an absentee ballot mailed it in.

The study's author said the results disproved assumptions that students are unreliable voters and find absentee voting too difficult to complete.