By Kathleen Gray
Detroit Free Press

MCT Political organizations and campaigns are hoping young women voters turn out for the 2008 presidential elections.

She had planned to take premed classes with the goal of becoming a doctor. But it was the fall of 2004 when the Lincoln Park, Mich., native started at MSU, 18 months into the war in Iraq and right in the middle of the election between George W. Bush and John Kerry.

"I discovered that I didn't have to wait the 10-12 years it would take me to get through med school and an internship and residency to start helping people," Mixter says. "I decided I could help really good people get elected to office. I changed my major to political science the next year."

Women like Mixter will be a focus for political campaigns in the next year, says Susan Carroll, a senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

"Young women and single women will be targeted a lot in terms of registering voters," she says. "There certainly is potential to increase their participation and turnout."

Which is promising news. Voter turnout among young women has been pretty abysmal.

In 2004, only 45.4 percent of women ages 20 to 24 voted in the presidential election, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But political organizations and campaigns are hoping to turn that around for the 2008 presidential elections. And with Hillary Clinton -- a credible woman candidate -- potentially on the ticket, that job might become easier.

"Young women in general are not as politically engaged. They've got bigger and more things to worry about like starting off their careers or starting a family," says Ramona Oliver of Emily's List, a Washington D.C.-based organization that recruits and supports women candidates. "But the one thing that I have seen when you have a top-tier woman candidate on the ballot, it increases turnout among women."

Once young women are on the voting rolls, the campaigns kick in to lure them into the fold.

"You can't believe how many e-mails I get," says Mixter, who is working for Clinton's campaign on campus.