Thursday night on “The Colbert Report,” host Stephen Colbert offered the team working to re-elect President Barack Obama a possible key piece of strategy. Marijuana legalization initiatives, he said, may be exactly the thing to push the president over the edge in terms of vote numbers.

Colbert reminded us (I don’t know about you, but I keep forgetting all the time) that we’re only five months away from choosing our next president. In 2004, in the race between then-President George W. Bush and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry (D), polls were showing the two men similarly deadlocked in the polls.

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An article at the Atlantic Wire blog recently mused that marijuana legalization ballot initiatives may wind up serving the same purpose electorally for the Obama administration that votes banning gay marriage served for the Bush administration in 2004. Colbert agreed, pointing out that critical swing states will have marijuana legalization measures on their ballots this November.

Colorado and Washington state will vote on full legalization initiatives in November. A similar measure was defeated in California in 2010. This week, Rhode Island decriminalized marijuana and Connecticut became the 17th state to legalize the drug for medical use earlier this month. At least seven more states are also considering legalizing medical marijuana this year.

Colbert said this could provide Democrats with just the edge they need by drawing in the youth vote.

“Because pot smokers,” he said, “are highly motivated, organized and punctual. There is nothing they would love more than getting off the couch, putting on pants and going to high school gyms packed with judgmental old people.”

Watch the clip, embedded via Comedy Central, below:

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