Student groups work together to make voting easier
Posted on Saturday, November 4, 2006
Campus organizations pulled together this year to offer a program helping students access early voting at the Washington County Courthouse.
The University Programs Campus Daytime Committee, Residents’ Interhall Congress, University Housing, NAACP and Young Democrats joined to bring Democracy on Wheels to the University of Arkansas. The programs offers rides to and from the courthouse in the days before the Tuesday’s general election to encourage students to exercise their voting rights.
“ It’s too easy to come up with some excuse to not vote on Election Day, ” said Jennifer Dreisbach, vice president of public relations with University Programs. “ It’s just one day, but you have all this time beforehand, so students need to get out there and do their civic duty. ”
Under Democracy on Wheels, a shuttle has run every 20-30 minutes since Monday to transport students registered to vote between the Intermodal Transit Facility and the courthouse. The university offered the same program two years ago on Election Day.
To encourage participation, the program included free T-shirts to the first 300 voters riding the shuttle.
The program has attracted more than students.
Fayetteville resident Crystal Terry often rides the Razorback Transit Services, so she naturally took the Democracy on Wheels shuttle after seeing an ad introducing the program.
Terry said she still would vote even without the program, but that it saved her the trouble of having to walk to the courthouse.
“ It’s handy, ” she said. “ There’s a lot of students and a lot of other people who take the bus who might not otherwise make it up here to vote. ”
Young Democrats president Cody Bassham thinks several issues should convince college students to vote.
Recent history has shown that politics affect scholarship availability, cut student aid and increase interest rates, Bassham said.
Young Democrats this year has encouraged college students to vote by operating voter registration tables and sending reminders about voting deadlines.
One new approach the organization took was to set up an account on Facebook. com, an online social networking service popular with high school and college students. The group’s Facebook account went from 35 registered members before the fall semester to more than 800 members this week.
“ It been pretty good, ” Bassham said. “ It allows me to send out more messages than I potentially could with e-mail.
“ And people that might not be interested in coming to meetings may still want to meet the candidates, and this way they can stay in touch. ”
Students with the College Republicans organization didn’t respond to an interview request.
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