With the Oct. 11 deadline to register to vote approaching, IU students teamed up with Baked! of Bloomington with a registration event offering free cookies in exchange for active political engagement.
IU College Democrats and IU College Republicans joined together Wednesday to encourage people in Bloomington to register to vote.
The two groups worked in shifts from 3-7 p.m. Wednesday. Two students, Paige Settles and Raegan Davis tabled for the College Democrats during the event.
Settles, political affairs director for the IU College Democrats, said Baked! contacted the College Democrats and College Republicans groups about putting together an open event to register community members, and particularly students, to vote in the upcoming general election.
“They were very proactive in being involved and wanting to do this event,” Settles said. “We were very excited that they did that.”
She said she had interned for Democratic campaigns in the past, and she came to IU this year as a first-year grad student looking for a way to be involved in some capacity. She said College Democrats seemed to be a good way to do that.
She said there is a common misconception that it takes a long time to register to vote. She said it typically only takes 30 seconds to a minute.
“I think it’s definitely a lack of knowledge about how easy it is,” Settles said. ”As a society we don’t do a good job about getting out how easy it is, which is one of the reasons why we’re trying to do so much more outreach.”
She said the College Democrats and Republican groups have done voter registration events in the past together, including last week’s greek Rock the Vote event on IU’s campus.
Raegan Davis, a freshman studying political science and Arabic, said they have recently gotten permission to extend their voter registration efforts to going door to door in IU residence halls, including Ashton, Read and Spruce.
“Events like this can be difficult because we’re not out in the open, we’re inside,” Davis said. “So if we can just catch people’s eye, sometimes that’s enough.”
Settles said not a lot of people had come through so far, but any voter registered is a success in their book.
“As many people as we can get, we’re happy to get,” Settles said.
Nicholas Crail, a manager at Baked!, said he didn’t see a huge amount of people come in to register but said he thought a cookie to register sounded like a pretty good deal.
“I feel like nowadays more and more people are saying their vote doesn’t matter and asking why they should vote,” Crail said. “We’re trying to be like, ‘Hey, it does, come on in, we’ll give you a cookie if you register.’ Just trying to get people to think about it.”
Settles said it is not only important to register to vote, but to register to vote in Bloomington. She said it’s important for students to make a difference in Bloomington’s turnout due to the city’s large student population adding to the town population. She said getting students to be informed early on is important to better the community as a whole.
“Getting students to register to vote now, getting them to form their ideas about politics, getting them to be informed about elections has a huge impact on how they interact with society in the future,” Settles said. “If they learn and start that process now it’ll make our community and our country a lot better place for decades.”
