Campus organizations reflect on engaging voters following N.C. registration deadline

Five tabling events. Four class announcements. One text bank reminder. 

That was the North Carolina Public Interest Research Group New Voters Project’s final push to get UNC students registered to vote before the state deadline on Friday. 

It was the conclusion to voter registration efforts that involved everything from manning a table outside the Undergraduate Library during peak lunch hours to visiting almost 30 different classes, according to Martha Plaehn, NCPIRG New Voters Project co-coordinator and UNC junior.

“Our organization says that the average person needs five reminders to turn out to vote,” Plaehn said. “So we try to be a reminder.”

Leadership Development Program Coordinator Natasha Young who works with the Student Life and Leadership’s Tar Heels Vote! Initiative said that there are multiple organizations like NCPIRG New Voters Project that participated in voter registration on campus leading up to the deadline.

Since Aug. 1, Young said that 161 students from 34 different organizations completed the Tar Heels Vote! registration training (available on HeelLife) that teaches students about the registering process. 

All student organizations that submit a reservation request for a voter registration event in the Pit had to complete the asynchronous training module and quiz. Young said that this training has helped several different organizations get involved with the cause.

“I think that it gives students opportunity to engage in voting and engage in civic engagement in a way that makes sense for them,” Young said.

In addition to running the voter registration training, Tar Heels Vote! also has a team of five students who got involved in voter registration efforts such as tabling in the Pit or partnering with student organizations at least once or twice a week. Young said that from those efforts, the organization collected at least 216 voter registration applications. 

Due to the number of other organizations — both student and outside groups — involved on campus, Young suspected that that the total number of student registrations was much higher.

“I think that just shows there were probably thousands collected on campus just in less than a two month span,” Young said.

College Republicans President Matthew Trott said that they had voter registration forms out at their Trump Tailgate events held before home football games, as well as at two events in the Pit. 

“The main point of it is getting people to engage in the democratic process,” Trott said.

The UNC Young Democrats also did a series of voter registration tabling events in the Pit including on the day of the Sept. 10 presidential debate.

Senior Rayland Anderson, a campus fellow for the N.C. Democratic Party who has collaborated with the Young Democrats, said that from that day alone they collected over 140 registrations.

Sophomore Prasidha Padmanabhan, a campus organizer for North Carolina Asian Americans Together’s Empower You Voter Project, said that she estimated that NCAAT had registered over 100 students to vote. The group has around 12 campus organizers all tasked with collecting at least 15 registrations, she said. However, Padmanabhan said that she knows some organizers who have collected over 30.

Padmanabhan said that aside from an understanding of the registration form, the most important skill for volunteers to have is the ability to engage in civic communication. When tabling, students often come to volunteers with many questions — sometimes ones the volunteers don’t have the answers to.

“It's honestly even better when people ask questions that we don't know because then we can kind of investigate together,” Padmanabhan said. 

Plaehn said that while voter registration was the main focus of The New Voters Project’s efforts, answering questions about polling locations, candidates on the ballot or valid types of voter ID, was some of their most meaningful work because it gave students who want to vote the information they need.

“Organizations like ours can help translate the care and the passion for democracy and for civic engagement into actually turning out to vote,” Plaehn said.

Therefore, Plaehn said that her work with the New Voters Project is far from over, even though the voter registration deadline has passed. In the month leading up to the election, they will continue their outreach to help students with early voting, absentee ballots and same-day registration at early voting polling locations.

“If it takes walking someone to The Chapel of the Cross for early voting, that's something that we'll do,” Plaehn said. “We just want to get people out to vote.”

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