Independent young voters in Florida could decide the election

A great article from the Tampa Tribune about young voters in Florida, with a variety of takes on all the candidates running,

The first interviewee talks about the health care crisis---a determinative factor for his vote, he said:

===

McMullin wanted to hear Kerry's speech about health care because, as a modestly paid employee of a small business, he's concerned about the cost of insurance that he has to bear himself.

``For jobs that don't offer it, it's pretty expensive,'' said McMullin, who hopes to find a better job teaching English to middle school or high school students.

``I know we're probably never going to have a system of socialized health care,'' said the former citizen of Canada, which has such a system. ``But if there's a way it could be funded so it wasn't so expensive, I think that would definitely be a plus for the hourly working guys, the cashiers of the world.''

Cashiers his age - often part-time or full-time students whose talk about the future remains mixed with their efforts to sort through romance and pop culture - are among the presidential campaign's most overlooked voters.

Yet along Central Florida's Interstate 4 corridor, where a significant percentage of undecided swing voters could tip the balance of a key electoral state, the under-30 vote could prove crucial.

One in five corridor voters is an Independent, like McMullin, and that's nowhere more evident than among the youngest voting-age segment.