Although many students seem to have heeded the calls of various partisan leaders asking them to register to vote in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, there are also those who have chosen otherwise.
Wharton sophomore Rick Fox was one of them.
An Ohio Independent voter, Fox's reasons for registering to vote in his home state are simple.
"Ohio is a swing state," he said. "I live in the most predominantly conservative county in the country. We don't have a lot of Democratic representation."
President George W. Bush led Democrat Al Gore in the 2000 election by a 4 percent margin in Ohio.
Fox, a Kerry supporter, noted that he would vote in Pennsylvania only if Ohio were "locked in as a Republican state and there was no way we could possibly win."
He doesn't see the point of voting in an already-decided state.
"My roommate [from] last year is voting in California, and I don't understand that at all," Fox said.
But there is another reason why he is not voting in Pennsylvania.
"I'd have to vote for all the Pennsylvanian senators, and I don't know anything about them," Fox said.
And local concerns seem to feature heavily on students' decisions to vote in their home state.
"There's a congressional election [at home] I want to vote in," said College junior Justin Raphael, a Connecticut voter and former Daily Pennsylvanian columnist. "Not enough people focus on the local elections."
"It was a hard decision, though," Raphael admitted, because Connecticut is likely to swing in favor of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.
Sometimes, students register to vote in their home state because they feel a lack of commitment to Pennsylvania.
"I'll be gone after four years," said College sophomore Megan Stinson, who is a registered Independent in New Jersey.
However, she admitted that she did not really take into account the consequences of her decision.
"When I registered to vote, I didn't really think about it," Stinson said.
And force of habit made the decision easy for some students.
"I was just too lazy to change it, I guess," said College junior Yumi Cho, a registered Independent in Virginia.
Cho is not bothered by her decision to pass up a chance to vote in a swing state.
"I like Virginia," she said.
For some students, the voter registration process is a turn-off.
"It's too much effort," said Wharton junior Lee Horn, who is not registered to vote.
Claiming Connecticut as his home state, Horn admitted that Philadelphia's battleground status was an "incentive to vote."
However, he chose not to register.
"I didn't really want to go through all that hassle," Horn said, adding that if he were registered, he would vote for Bush.
