Jacqueline Pecor, president of the Sonoma State University College Republicans, gets a temporary Bush tattoo during a nonpartisan campus event to register students for the November election. (CRISTA JEREMIASON / The Press Democrat)

It wasn't the free hip-hop concert, airbrush tattoos, dunk-the-candidate booth or snowcones that coaxed Laura Landon out of her dorm at Sonoma State University to register to vote.

The 18-year-old freshman was thinking, instead, of her cousin from Stockton who's serving in the Army in Iraq.

"I just want to see Bush out of office," said Landon, who registered as a Democrat during Sonoma State's first voter extravaganza - a non-partisan drive students held to sign up their peers.

"Because of 9/11, many changes have been triggered in our world," said Landon, a pre-nursing major from Folsom. "I just wanted to put my voice out there."

Landon, one of the latest recruits in a nationwide push to court first-time voters, has started college amidst a flurry of activities on the Rohnert Park campus aimed at reversing low voter turnout among 18 to 24 year olds.

Newly organized clubs for young Republicans, Democrats and Green Party members are mobilizing, while the SSU library is hosting a three-month arts and lecture series this fall on why voting matters.

"What you're seeing is part of a larger phenomenon," said Grant Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University. "On Election Day, I think you're going to see turnout among this age group to be higher."

Turnout among young American voters has declined by a third in the three decades since 18-year-olds became eligible to vote, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.

But after a dismal turnout of 37 percent by U.S. voters ages 18 to 24 in 2000, surveys this year show interest in the election among young adults is near peak levels. Polls by the Harvard Institute of Politics, the Pew Research Center and MTV in spring and summer found young people say they plan to vote in numbers that far surpass 2000. About 40 million Americans - or one in five eligible voters - are 18 to 29, according to the nonprofit Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or CIRCLE.

"We are the largest unclaimed voting bloc in this country," said James O'Leary, 24, executive director of the Soapbox Coalition, a non-partisan group working to educate 18- to 30-year-old voters. "Traditionally, politicians would ignore young voters and young voters, in turn, would ignore politicians. We're seeing a reversal."

Four years after the closely contested Bush-Gore election, national surveys and interviews with local students reveal their heightened interest in the economy, the war in Iraq, health care, the environment - issues on which the Nov. 2 election could turn. Compared with 2000, young adults told pollsters they're more likely (32 percent versus 14 percent) to have talked about the 2004 presidential campaign within the past day, and more likely (56 percent versus 27 percent) to have spent the past day thinking about the campaign, Harvard University's Vanishing Voter project found.

"The youth are really angry now," said Veronica Lopez, treasurer of the Sonoma Campus Greens, which is sponsoring a Sonoma State appearance tonight by Ralph Nader's running mate, Peter Camejo.

"We have these ideals that everyone believes in - that we should live peacefully and democratically," said Lopez, 28, an anthropology major from Stockton. "But when it comes down to it, our elected officials are not addressing those issues."

Although more than a third of U.S. colleges and universities have failed to comply with a federal mandate to provide students with voter registration forms, SSU officials said they distributed those materials to new graduates last spring.

This fall, a campus "It Matters" series is blending the arts, politics, journalism, criminal justice and other fields into a series of weekly brown-bag discussions about civic engagement. Organized by SSU's library, it evolved as a reaction to students' frustrations over the fall 2003 gubernatorial recall and the 2000 split between the Bush-Gore popular and electoral college votes.

"I was listening to students say, 'There's no point ... whoever I vote for, somebody could put a recall out,'" said Karen Brodsky, coordinator of "It Matters."

SSU sophomore Keith Borg was among those who cast his first vote for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. In his debut presidential vote, he'll support President Bush.

"I believe in smaller government, individual responsibility, and fiscal responsibility," said Borg, 19, a student from Redding and vice president of his school's College Republicans.

Borg, like some fellow College Republicans officers, disagrees with some Bush social policies, including the president's objections to legalized gay marriage and the limitations he's placed on stem cell research.

And despite California being solidly in the "blue" states column - a sure bet to cast its electoral votes for Kerry - Borg expressed a desire to influence, indirectly, the Democrats' campaign in toss-up states.

"If it gets close, Kerry is going to have to start spending money here (in California) and take some money away from some battleground states," Borg said. "It's not feasible for me to go back to 16 other states ... this is the best place for me to do it right now."

California may not be a swing state, 19-year-old Democrat Carlos Nieto agreed, but voter mobilization still counts in local and state races - and in building a mandate for the winning presidential candidate.

"In this election, you have a lot of things: the possibility of a draft in 2005, the war in Iraq and the lack of good-paying jobs," said Nieto, a sophomore from Atwater who leads the Progressive College Democrats. "If John Kerry gets a strong mandate from the American people, it's going to be a lot easier to enact progressive legislation."

A smaller scale get-out-the-vote effort also is under way at Santa Rosa Junior College. Since classes resumed last month, student government leaders have camped out every Tuesday and Wednesday on the quad, registering new voters. On Thursday, the politically active "Raging Grannies" will assist their younger junior college counterparts in a registration drive.

"The 18 to 25 population needs to start being responsible and participating in the process," said Kory White, an SRJC student senator. "A lot of those people are complaining about everything, but if they don't even vote, they have no right to complain."