With the Nov. 5 election just weeks away, students can find on-campus and online options to register Tuesday for National Voter Registration Day.
“Voting is critical to being engaged,” said junior Josephine McCormick, a student ambassador for IU’s Political and Civic Engagement program.
McCormick said PACE will be registering voters from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the clock tower near Woodburn Hall.
The registration drive is part of the Big Ten Voting Challenge, an effort by the Big Ten schools to increase student registration and voting. McCormick said IU is currently leading the challenge.
As a nonpartisan organization, PACE’s goal is to make voting access easy to students regardless of ideology or party affiliation, McCormick said.
“Basically, we don’t care who you’re voting for, we just want students to become civically engaged in some way,” McCormick said.
If students don’t have time to register during the Woodburn Hall clock tower tabling, they can also register to vote through PACE at the First Thursdays Festival, in the program’s office at Woodburn Hall 221 or online.
“Voting should not be made a challenge,” McCormick said. “Voting should be welcomed. It should be encouraged.”
Instead of tabling, College Democrats at IU members will be walking around with voter registration forms from 4 to 5 p.m., said senior and the group's president Jack Parke.
Members will collect those forms along with forms they collected during last Friday’s Global Climate Strike and send them in.
Parke said students might feel like politicians currently in office don’t represent them, so they should vote for people who better match their values instead of giving up on the political process.
“I think that’s how things break down, is when people stop caring,” Parke said.
Matt Bludgen, a junior and College Republicans at IU chair, said his organization is not planning any events for tomorrow but may team up with the College Democrats later in the semester for a kickball game where participants must first register to vote in order to play.
In the meantime, Bludgen said students interested in learning more about the upcoming elections should attend College Republicans or College Democrats meetings to find information. Sometimes candidates even come to the meetings to speak to students.
“We just want everyone to have their voice out there, and we think it’s important for them to stay engaged,” Bludgen said.
