The Page

By Mark Halperin

The New College Try. Obama banks on a one-stop-voting program to woo North Carolina students

Barack Obama's challenge How can the campaign maximize turnout among North Carolina's more than 400,000 college students when many schools will be in the midst of exams or finished for the semester at the time of the May 6 primary?

THE ANSWER

Take advantage of the Tar Heel State's new one-stop early-voting program, which runs through May 3. Using old-fashioned direct mail sent to campus mailboxes as well as rallies, concerts and MySpace ads, the campaign is encouraging students to hit polling places now, where they can register to vote and cast their ballots in a single trip. Potential voters can have the nearest polling location sent to them by text message, find it on the campaign's website or call a toll-free phone number.

Hillary Clinton has learned from past defeats that she must compete aggressively with Obama for younger voters. Still, her on-campus efforts have been less extensive, in part because Obama has the extra campaign funds to spend on items such as address lists and glossy mailings. Another advantage for Obama: the large contingent of his supporters among those attending the state's historically African-American colleges and universities.

So far, more than 164,000 North Carolinians have voted early. Don Wright, general counsel for the North Carolina State Board of Elections, says reports from throughout the state indicate that many of those voters are students, though officials do not track exactly how many.

Based on his past experiences with absentee ballots, Wright believes one-stop-voting numbers could surge in the closing days of the program. If Obama's plan works, he will get a huge boost from the youth vote, as he has in other states. And should he win his party's nomination, his campaign will be able to apply what it learned about targeting students in a general election.

How Obama Is Gunning for McCain

The protracted nomination fight hasn't stopped the Obama campaign from looking ahead to a November battle with John McCain. Steps it has taken:

SHARING THE WEALTH The Obama camp has reached a fund-raising deal with the Democratic National Committee, which could spread his money magic to the party's fall campaign

FINDING NEW VOTERS The campaign has announced an ambitious 50-state voter-registration drive

PREPARING TO SPEND The Senator's team has gamed out a general election in which he rejects public funding and taps into more than $200 million in expected contributions to force the GOP to defend red states like Texas and Georgia

Edwards Faces Election Day--As a Voter

While the rivals who vanquished him campaigned in his state, former presidential candidate and North Carolina Senator John Edwards decamped with his family to Disney World in Orlando, Fla. Despite extensive behind-the-scenes conversations with the campaigns of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Edwards has yet to endorse either candidate. His politically active wife Elizabeth has also withheld her support, though she took time off from their vacation to talk to the media about how much she likes Clinton's health-care plan--and dislikes McCain's. On May 6, John Edwards plans to choose between Obama and Clinton at his local Chapel Hill polling station--in secret.

Over? Or Just Starting? Mark Halperin reports from the campaign every day on thepage.time.com

With reporting by Randy James, Katie Rooney