With only two months remaining until critical elections take place across the country, current Penn students will not be the only ones considering whether to vote here in Philadelphia or in their home states.
Recent Penn graduates who registered to vote in Pennsylvania while living in the city will also have to decide whether to cast a vote here - even though it may be illegal.
Rachel Fersh, who graduated from Penn in May and was chairwoman of the Undergraduate Assembly, registered to vote in Pennsylvania while living here. Now working in Washington, D.C., Fersh says that she will vote once again in the Pennsylvania elections this fall.
"I know the issues" in Pennsylvania, she said. "I know the politics there."
Other Penn graduates now living and working in Washington have pointed out that they have no representation in Congress, giving them incentive to vote in another state for as long as they can.
"I take my voting very seriously," Fersh said.
Fersh's attempt to "make her vote count" is part of a growing trend in the United States since the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, according to Jack Nagel, a Penn Political Science professor.
Nagel referred to the Ralph Nader "trade" Web sites that became popular during the 2000 presidential election, where voters from "safe" states - states that were guaranteed to be won by Democrat candidate Al Gore - "traded" their votes with voters from swing states who wanted to vote for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader.
Although trading votes may have ultimately caused Gore to lose the election, the trend points to an attempt by voters to make their votes matter as much as possible, Nagel said.
At the same time, Nagel added that Fersh's voting strategy was "dubious" in terms of legality, since she no longer lives in the state in which she plans to vote.
College senior Bren Darrow, director of Penn Leads the Vote - a non-partisan voter-mobilization drive - said that federal law requires a person to re-register when he or she moves to another state.
"Legally speaking, your voter registration lasts one year from the date on which you moved out of your former residence," he said.
Darrow added that Penn Leads the Vote encourages graduating students leaving Pennsylvania to continue to vote wherever they go.
Fersh voted in her hometown of Bethesda, Md., by absentee ballot her freshman year at Penn, but changed her registration to Philadelphia after getting more involved in local politics.
Despite the loss of many registered voters from Penn every year, Darrow had encouraging statistics for voter participation in recent elections.
"In 2004, we were able to generate a 172-percent increase in voter turnout compared with 2000" among students, he said.
The deadline to register for the Nov. 7 Pennsylvania election is Oct. 10.
