The Daily Campus: Student Voting Skyrockets

UConn Student Voter Turnout Rose 720 Percent

Youth voting is on the rise both nationally and here on campus.

Youth turnout for the 2006 midterm elections increased 3 percentage points since 2002, according to recent data from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE).

According to CIRCLE, between 22 percent and 24 percent of eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 29 went to the polls for the 2006 midterms, a clear increase from the 20 percent youth turnout in 2002.

The percentage of UConn students who voted in 2006 also increased. Student voter turnout rose by 720 percent since the 2002 midterm elections, according to Marshall Rivers, a 7th-semester political science and geography major and vice president of the College Democrats. According to Rivers, last fall UConn student organizations registered 1,600 new voters on campus, 924 of whom voted in the midterm elections. Four years earlier in 2002, 129 UConn students voted in the midterm elections.

Some believe UConn voters made all the difference in Democrat Joe Courtney's narrow victory over Republican incumbent Rob Simmons in the representative race for Connecticut's 2nd congressional district.

"If you look at the way the voting went so heavily in his favor here, there is really no doubt that UConn made all the difference, especially in such a narrow election," said Steve Boratko, a 7th-semester political science major who is membership coordinator of the College Democrats.

Courtney's office also acknowledged the impact UConn students had on his election.

"Clearly the effort that the students made really put us over the top because we won by only eighty-three votes," said Lon Seidman, Courtney's campaign manager in 2006.

Representative Courtney won by less than half of one percentage point, according to a Nov. 16 article in The Daily Campus. Support for the democratic candidate was overwhelming in Mansfield, where Courtney received 4,398 out of 6,275 total votes, according to Andrea Epling, Democratic Registrar of Voters in town hall.

Voting awareness programs at UConn began early in fall 2006, when UConn Votes - a coalition composed of numerous student organizations such as ConnPIRG, Undergraduate Student Government (USG), the College Democrats and the College Republicans - formed to register students to vote, according to a Sept. 25 article in The Daily Campus.

"The college democrats did a lot of dorm-storming, meaning going into dorms, especially freshmen dorms, and knocking on doors," Boratko said. "We kept track of who we registered and then on Election Day made sure we stopped by their rooms to remind them to vote."

Other efforts by UConn Votes included busing students to the polls and giving out frosty gift certificates and T-shirts to those who voted, Boratko said.

Also, technology has been used nationwide as a tool to register student voters and lure them to the polls. In an Oct. 19, 2006 posting on the Rock the Vote blog, the Internet appears to be a new and successful way to encourage youth voting. For this reason, Rock the Vote has become active on Facebook and MySpace in an effort to reach young voters.

By Kate King, UConn Daily Campus, 8/30/07

The Day: Congressmen Blast Feds on Child Insurance Policy Change

Hartford: Democratic U.S. Reps. Joseph Courtney and John Larson sharply denounced a recent change in federal policy Tuesday that they said could bump thousands of children out of Connecticut's health-care programs for the working poor.

Courtney and Larson joined officials from the Connecticut Children's Medical Center in Hartford to condemn an Aug. 17 directive that substantially reins in the efforts by individual states to expand coverage of low-income children through the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

That federal program is the funding source for Connecticut's HUSKY B health program, which has been expanded in recent years to provide low-cost health insurance for children whose families earn up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level.

Courtney, who represents the 2nd District in eastern Connecticut, and Larson, of the 1st District encompassing greater Hartford, joined a bipartisan majority in Congress that voted to substantially increase funding for the SCHIP just before departing for the annual August recess.

But the Aug. 17 letter to state officials from Dennis G. Smith, the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, orders new restrictions on the income thresholds of SCHIP-funded programs, and would effectively limit states to covering children up to 250 percent of the federal poverty level — or $42,925 per year for a family of three.

The change could bump out of the HUSKY B program as many as 3,500 children whose families earn just enough to make them ineligible for coverage, Courtney said, citing figures from the state Department of Social Services. Other advocacy groups peg the figure as high as 4,300.

Smith's letter orders any state that seeks to expand eligibility for SCHIP-funded children's health plans to those earning more than that 250 percent threshold to adopt “crowd-out strategies,” designed to prevent those who might otherwise pay for coverage from private insurers from enrolling in government plans. They include a mandatory one-year waiting period during which individuals must be uninsured before they receive coverage.

And the letter also includes a requirement that Courtney and Larson — like both Republican and Democratic officials around the country — have said is so stringent it would be impossible for any state to meet: Before expanding above 250 percent of the federal poverty level, a state would have to certify that at least 95 percent of kids already eligible for health-care coverage under SCHIP are receiving that coverage.

Speaking to a mixed crowd of reporters, doctors, hospital staff and patients in the cafeteria of the medial center, Larson dismissed the Medicaid directive as political “posturing,” noting that it had not been sent until after Bush had threatened to veto a Senate version of the SCHIP funding bill.

And Courtney was just as critical, saying that the administration was sending mixed messages to states like Connecticut, which has previously received Washington's blessing when it augmented the Medicaid programs with state money in an effort to offer insurance to a broader swath of uninsured children.

“It's very schizo,” Courtney said, “because they are the ones who have granted waivers for New Jersey and New York and Connecticut. I think that's really what caught people by surprise, that the same agency that's been giving states the green light suddenly came out with this.”

The opposition, Courtney said, is “ideological.”

“There is a school of thought in these pretty conservative think tanks that SCHIP is crowding out private health insurance, that it's too easy to enroll, and that this approach is damaging” to the industry, he said. “... There really has not been any study that has demonstrated that the drop in private health coverage is a result of the availability of HUSKY. It's because of the costs.”

A spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services declined to respond to the congressmen, saying she expected that the agency would negotiate with congressional leaders when attempts to reconcile House and Senate funding bills for SCHIP begin next month.
There is resistance at the state level, too, including from Republicans like Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who have invested in expansions of state health-care programs.

“The governor has said that wherever the final resolution is on the SCHIP issue, it's important that the federal government take no action that would represent a step backward for states like Connecticut that are trying to include as many people as possible in HUSKY,” said Rell's spokesman, Chris Cooper.

Medical experts are just as determined not to roll back previous years' expansions in insurance for low-income children, saying it is both a moral imperative and a better investment than paying for exacerbated health problems down the road.

“I think it's obvious ... that all children deserve the health care they need to learn and to grow,” said Martin J. Gavin, the president and CEO of the medical center. “And state-sponsored programs are absolutely critical to making that happen.”

Gavin said 45 percent of children treated at the hospital are covered by HUSKY.

The same day that the congressmen voiced their concerns brought new figures on the lack of insurance nationwide, where 47 million Americans lack health coverage, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and in Connecticut, where there was apparently a modest reduction in the uninsured between 2005 and 2006.

The state's uninsured ranks decreased slightly, according to the census figures, from about 381,000 in 2005 to about 325,000 in 2006. The numbers are approximate since they are dependent on a small sample size.

The same census figures also appear to show that more residents, including children, relied on some form of Medicaid assistance — including SCHIP coverage like HUSKY — for health coverage in 2006. While 18.6 percent of children in Connecticut received some form of Medicaid coverage in 2005, the figure rose to 23.7, or about 195,000 children, one year later.

To advocates of HUSKY, that's a reason to keep expanding the program, not to circumscribe it as they say the Bush administration now threatens to do.

“If the feds are going to move back, then obviously we're going to lose on those gains, and more kids are going to be uninsured,” said Ellen Andrews, executive director of the Connecticut Health Policy Project.

House and Senate members will meet in conference next month on the proposals to reauthorize the 10-year-old SCHIP program. The House plan, which both Courtney and Larson have supported, would provide $50 billion in funding for the program, enough to raise income thresholds to 400 percent of federal poverty level.

By Ted Mann, The Day, 8/29/2007

The Day: Eightmile River Closer to National Designation

The Eightmile River and its watershed are now within one vote of finally becoming part of the National Park Service's Wild and Scenic Rivers System.

The House of Representatives on Tuesday voted 253-172 to pass a bill making the Eightmile part of the Wild and Scenic system. The vote gives three rural towns in the watershed — Salem, East Haddam and Lyme — access to federal grants and other programs to enhance its protection. It also rewards the local groups that have worked for 10 years to win the designation for the river.

Currently, 168 rivers nationwide are included in the system, among them only one in Connecticut, the Farmington River.

The Senate is expected to vote on a companion bill in the next couple of weeks, according to a spokeswoman for Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. If that measure is approved, a final version would then go to President Bush, who is expected to sign it.

The decade-long task involved a lengthy study documenting the environmental value of the watershed, numerous town meetings and a grass-roots campaign to build support among local residents as well as local, state and federal elected officials.

“This is a huge step and the one we needed,” said Nathan Frohling, vice chairman of the local committee that has been shepherding the Eightmile designation project.

“One of the things we're so pleased about is that the voices from Connecticut have been so unified.”

The bill had bipartisan support of the entire Connecticut congressional delegation, as well as the state legislature and Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell. Residents of all three towns voted in separate meetings last year to seek the designation for the river, which begins at Devil's Hopyard State Park and flows through dozens of forested acres before emptying into the Connecticut River at Hamburg Cove.

Passage of the bill Tuesday is a major victory for freshman Rep. Joe Courtney because it was the first bill he introduced when he took the Second District seat after defeating incumbent Republican Rep. Rob Simmons.

“The passage of this bill is the culmination of years of advocacy by the local communities surrounding the Eightmile River,” Courtney, a Democrat, said in a news release. “Environmental conservation is a crucial component to protecting the quality of life of eastern Connecticut, and this sends a signal that preserving the environment will be a top priority in my agenda.”

Twenty-three Republicans joined Democrats in voting for the bill Tuesday. Two weeks ago, 18 Republicans voted in favor in an earlier attempt to win passage that failed because the House was operating at that time under rules that required a two-thirds majority for passage rather than a simple majority.

Opposition at that time and again before the vote Tuesday was led by Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, who persisted until the end in trying to add language to the bill barring any federal taking of land in the watershed. Supporters deemed the language redundant since the bill already specifically states that privately owned land in the watershed could be acquired for conservation only through voluntary sale or donation, and specifically prohibits any taking of land by eminent domain or condemnation.

“This is a scare tactic,” Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., said of the opposition's arguments before Tuesday's vote. “The motivation for the opposition has more to do with the audacity of the gentleman from Connecticut to run for office and unseat an incumbent.”

The Day, Judy Benson, 8/1/2007