Each election year, colleges and universities across the nation
witness a plethora of on-campus voter registration activities. The
results of these drives are most often assessed by tallying the
number of voter registration cards collected. Little has been done,
however, to more carefully investigate these results. As a first
attempt to examine postdrive results more thoroughly, we ask two
questions. First, do students who register through an on-campus
voter registration drive actually make it to the voting booth?
Second, does providing basic information about the voting process
increase turnout among students who register through an on-campus
voter registration drive? In this study, we investigate the overall
turnout rate of students registering to vote in the 2008
presidential election through on-campus registration drives by
validating votes through the office of the county voting registrar.
We then compare the turnout rate of students who registered through
the on-campus drives with the turnout rate of similar young people
nationwide. Finally, we investigate whether the provision of
information through certain avenues boosts turnout. Our findings
show that students who registered through an on-campus voter
registration drive turned out to vote at a higher rate than similar
young people nationwide. Additionally, we found small but important
effects of information provision through different formats.