This Week's Inbox Refugees

Various items that I've noticed but don't have time to dig into:

Reports from Texas indicate that voter registration is way up. Some are even predicting a big youth turnout due to the governor's race (which Josh has blogged here.)

A number of groups are looking to make college education costs a big issue in the upcoming election (a little late for that, no?). I don't think college education costs are going to be the factor that these groups want in '06, but I do think that this issue could be a big player in the primaries, where presidential contenders will need to gather the support of the increasingly important youth vote.

Garance Franke-Ruta wrote a bit about this on Tapped. Apparently, students in Iowa and New Hampshire (pdf) have the greatest debt burdens in America among college grads - making this a juicy primary issue. We'll see which presidential contenders can make hay out of it in '07 and '08.

Little Joey Biden may be the first candidate to hop on that bandwagon. Iowa Politics is reporting that his PAC just donated $3000 to the Iowa College Democrats to do GOTV work this cycle.

Finally, an initiative to legalize marijuana looks like its been taking tips from the New Politics Institute. Groups supporting the measure have been reaching out to students through social networking sites and targeted radio buys. It will be interesting to see how much support they garner.