A blitz for ballots
Ben Penn and Allison Stice
Issue date: 10/15/08
Volunteers
from the TerpsVote coalition, including members of MaryPIRG and the
SGA, learned last week that they registered the second-highest number
of voters among the 156 colleges and universities nationwide
participating in PIRG's New Voters Project this semester.
But
instead of settling with the tentative total of 1,783 voters they had
registered as of Monday night, MaryPIRG's campus organizer Greg Schwab
said, student volunteers continued their aggressive push to sign up
those last few procrastinating students.
In the words of one volunteer organizer, yesterday was crunch day.
TerpsVote
set up tables at Stamp Student Union, outside of the North and South
Campus Dining Halls and the McKeldin and Hornbake libraries yesterday,
registering an additional 471 voters for an estimated total of 2,514
newly registered voters, including 260 university students who
registered online, according to Schwab.
"We're trying to get
everybody that fell through the cracks, get the stragglers and just be
really visible, so students realize, 'Oh, crap, it's the last day,' and
register to vote," said Lauren Kim, president of the university chapter
of MaryPIRG, who estimated each volunteer collected an average of 30
registration forms per hour Tuesday.
Kim said Monday's one-day total of 125 new registrants had already been surpassed as of 1 p.m. yesterday.
Mobs
of students crowded the table at the Student Union in bursts, some who
weren't aware of the deadline, others who put if off until the last
minute, and a rash of out-of-state students who decided to change their
address.
Senior criminology and criminal justice and English
major Katherine Garcia went out looking for registration tables today
after a fellow sorority member reminded her of the deadline.
"And
I'm really happy about that, the reason being I live in Rockville and I
didn't want to go over there to vote on election day," Garcia said.
"Hopefully, everything works out with my paperwork."
Sophomore
letters and sciences major Andrew Choi wasn't aware of the deadline
until he heard the echoes of MaryPIRG interns yelling through makeshift
megaphones of rolled-up paper.
Schwab said he made a last-minute
run to the Board of Elections office in Upper Marlboro "literally to
make the 9 p.m. deadline" last night.
Elsewhere on the campus, SGA President Jonathan Sachs tried to
encourage student registration by speaking in three different
government and politics lecture halls.
"Today is the last day [
to register] to vote in the state of Maryland. How many of you are
registered to vote?" Sachs asked, getting straight to the point in his
brief address to the more than a hundred students packed into Shoemaker
Hall's lecture room.
Nearly all the students signaled they were
registered by raising their hands, but Sachs passed out registration
forms and pens nonetheless and still walked away with a fresh stack of
filled out forms five minutes later.
"Going in and speaking to
classes is powerful. There are 15 [additional] voter registration forms
I have in my hand - 15 percent of the class. It's really incredible,"
he said.
Standing nearby, by the front entrance of South Campus
Dining Hall, MaryPIRG campus organizer senior government and politics
major Dan Shults was finishing up the last half hour of his 1 to 3 p.m.
shift, asking every student who passed if he or she still needed to
register to vote.
Shults said he had collected 20 forms in the
first 90 minutes of his shift and had answered many students' questions
regarding changing their registered addresses.
Shults' work was
appreciated by one passing student, geography doctoral candidate Leeann
King, who stopped to change her address. King, who said MaryPIRG's
tabling allowed her to avoid a trip to Baltimore, felt fortunate to be
a student.
"It's such a hassle for anyone who is not in the school system. What do people do who don't have vehicles?" she asked.
Yesterday
marked the last day of an increasingly frenzied effort, as MaryPIRG
interns said they've each put in between 10 and 20 hours over the past
weeks. Last weekend, they canvassed off-campus housing, including
University Town Center, Knox and Hartwick Towers and the University
View.
The interns and volunteers will be taking a break for a
while before focusing their efforts on getting people who have
registered to pledge to go to the polls Nov. 4. The Stamp table
yesterday featured the first model of a cardboard "vote boat,"
spray-painted red, white and blue, which will be waterproofed,
outfitted with cannons and sent to float down the fountain on the Mall
sometime in the next few weeks, Kim said.
penndbk@gmail.com
