With the first states reaching their voter registration deadlines this week, election officials are happily reporting vast increases in the number of potential voters, according to the New York Times. Many credit the efforts of independent and partisan voter registration drives; others cite a swing-state mentality that prompts more voters to register in crucial election states.

Hopefully, this mentality will extend to nonswing California, where voters have until Oct. 18 to register. If it does, it will be a welcome harbinger of the importance of the upcoming election, with many important issues on the national stage. Moreover, if the surge in voter registration branches into that ever-apathetic, vote-rocking bloc of 18- to 24-year-olds this year, we will know that we have a special election on our hands.

Thankfully, there are already many indicators that it will, with sex-themed voter registration campaigns and pop-culture icons bringing young voters into the fray. Even on our politically docile campus, activist groups and the likes of speakers and pundits Al Franken and Peter Miguel Camejo have brought the election to students and, with any luck, kindled some interest.

And why not? With tuition levels, employment rates and the fate of the nation’s troops in Iraq — 80 percent of whom are under 35 — all contested election territory, our generation’s stake in this election is high indeed. College students, at UCSD and elsewhere, must recognize this and join the growing rolls of potential voters nationwide.