By Blake Haas
NORMAL – On National Voter Registration Day, colleges and local officials from the Twin-Cities are kicking off a student voter registration competition.
The competition between Illinois State University, Illinois Wesleyan University, and Heartland Community college aims at getting students to exercise their right to vote.
Katy Strzepek, the Director of the Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning team at Illinois State University, said even if students do not like the presidential candidates, it is still vital to vote.
“We encourage students to look at issues that are most important to them as students, and to try to reflect upon how each candidate, how their platform supports or does not support their views. While some students may feel frustrated that the candidates are not the ones that they had hoped, we still try to encourage them to focus on the issues and to think about how they affect them as students and individuals. And encourage them to continue to exercise their civic duty of voting.”
Statistically speaking, McLean County Clerk Kathy Michael said that student voter turnout is high on a presidential election year. However, Michael said even if students move apartments or dorms, they will have to re-register to vote.
“I think they are engaged, and it’s helpful to make them even more engaged with what you are doing, which is wonderful. But, we see an awful lot of interest, and of course, this year is more exciting, I guess or challenging as ever, so I think we are going to see a great big turnout…If a student might say ‘oh yeah, I was registered last time I was down here,’ not just students, forget this, even if you move across the hallway to a different dorm room, you have to register to vote.”
Since Heartland does not have student housing, Student Government Advisor Skylar Guimond said the campus has been using emails and social media to get students to register to vote.
At IWU, Bevin Choban, Coordinator of the Action Research Center, said the campus would be utilizing the Wesleyan App and social media campaigns to encourage students to register to vote.
Blake Haas can be reached at [email protected].
