July 22, 2012

Online Service Works With Colleges to Get Students Registered to Vote

Shelby Taylor

TurboVote is promoted on an electronic sign near the football stadium at the U. of Florida.

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By Timothy Sandoval

Maybe one reason for college students' spotty turnout at the polls, at least since the 2008 election, is that registering to vote, unlike the rest of their online lives, is inconvenient. Seth Flaxman had that thought as a master's student at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he had enrolled partly to explore his observation that the Internet had made just about everything work better—except government.

Mr. Flaxman missed three local and statewide