StudentsVOTE! drives up UCLA voter registration
Actress Rosario Dawson was on campus Thursday encouraging UCLA students to vote. More than 2,000 UCLA students have registered since this summer, and StudentsVOTE! hopes to get another 1,000 students by the Oct. 18 deadline. Listen at dailybruin.com/radio
By Sarah Jo
Oct. 15, 2010 12:02 a.m.
With Monday’s voting registration deadline approaching, campus organizers are trying to round up as many would-be student voters for the Nov. 2 state elections.
Volunteers from the UCLA StudentsVOTE! Coalition and the larger University of California-wide voter registration groups say they hope to help as many students as possible in these last few days.
To be eligible to vote in California, a person must be at least 18 years old on or before the Nov. 2 election day, a U.S. citizen and a state resident.
The coalition has registered more than 2,000 students since the summer, working under the External Vice President’s Office of the Undergraduate Students Association Council.
“The biggest push is towards the end, and we expect to get the most turnout,” said Erienne Overli, the coalition director and third-year political science student.
Overli said the campus organization’s goal is to register 3,000 students by the Oct. 18 deadline.
Among the several ways students can still get their registration form include visiting StudentsVOTE! Coalition tables on Bruin Walk, county election offices, libraries or post offices.
Voters can also register or change their voter information online by going to the California Secretary of State website at sos.ca.gov/elections and clicking on the “Register to Vote” link.
Overli and other volunteers will continue Get Out the Vote efforts until Monday, including tabling on campus, storming the Residential Hill, and holding a Rock the Vote! Concert on Saturday at De Neve Plaza.
Similar registration events have been held on many UC and California State University campuses, drawing about 26,000 registration forms in the last few weeks.
So far the University of California Student Association’s registration drives yielded lower registration figures than its 2008 presidential election efforts, which resulted in the largest election haul with more than 42,000 registered voters. Yet organizers said the mid-term election is just as important for students, if not more.
“Students don’t realize this, but they are the margin of victory,” Overli said. “(President Barack) Obama could not have won without the people under the age of 25. Votes do matter.”
UCSA Field Organizer Jaclyn Feldstein said the gubernatorial elections will affect students directly because the governor appoints all the members of the UC Board of Regents, which makes decisions on tuition fees and access to higher education.
In addition to the governor, residents will vote for the lieutenant governor, state lawmakers and other local officials, as well as several propositions that include state constitutional amendments.
The state has already seen a slight 2 percent jump in the state’s total voter registration since the last gubernatorial election of 2006 ““ from approximately 15.6 million to 17 million voters, according to an early California Elections Division report.
Overli said much has yet to be done to ensure that busy college students register to vote in time.
Most recently, the coalition was joined by actress Rosario Dawson and the nonpartisan group she co-founded, Voto Latino, to further the grassroots outreach among UCLA students Thursday.
During the day, the organizations registered about 240 students in the drive on Bruin Walk.
Several students also took extra registration forms to distribute to acquaintances on their own time.
Toward the end of the event, Ruby Davalos, a fourth-year sociology student, re-registered to vote and took a pile of extra forms as she was leaving.
Davalos is a member of Latinas Guiding Latinas de UCLA, a service group that reaches out to the East Los Angeles community weekly, and she said she wanted to give out the registration forms to younger Latina high school students and provide political awareness during the election season.
“It’s important for us who are eligible to vote to be informed about the government and make sure we are making the right decisions when electing these officials,” she said. “Everyone has their own opinions, but we all should be making an effort to inform ourselves.”
As the voting deadline draws near, students opting to register on their own must postmark or hand-deliver the registration form to their own county elections office by Oct. 18 at 8 p.m.
