Continuing with its platform of utilizing student voting power, the Associated Students of Portland State University is pressing onward in its efforts to get students registered to vote. ASPSU representatives can be seen throughout the PSU campus handing out voter registration cards or giving presentations to class audiences.
With only an estimated 50 percent of Oregon students registered to vote and an even lower amount actually participating in the democratic process, ASPSU has pushed hard this spring term to tap into this voting block.
ASPSU employed previously utilized strategies as well as new tactics to register students. “We do class raps, which is when we go into classes with the professor’s permission and give a quick presentation on the benefits of voting and to remind students that they may need to re-register. We also clipboard and table all over campus,” said Kismet Kilbourn, ASPSU representative and processing coordinator for the vote campaign.
Rosa Martinez, ASPSU’s vote campaign manager said, “Some new strategies that we used this time around: reaching out to athletics, which granted us access to go to games and table there, reaching out to UCOMM, which resulted in an ad in the Virtual Viking and contacting student housing off of campus, which we got access to as well. We also had a themed campaign, which helped excite volunteers and keep the energy fun.”
In January, ASPSU was able to register 985 students in two days, when they were originally aiming for 700. The drive has continued it’s efforts and has found similar results. “Our goal this term was to register 1,500 students. As of now, we have already registered 1,609 students,” Martinez said.
ASPSU plans to register almost four times the amount of students during spring term according to Kilbourn.
The Oregon Student Assoc-iation, a student-run advocacy group, has played a major role in getting Oregon students registered. The association is made up of colleges and universities from around Oregon. “This year, the Oregon Student Association hosted a voteconference, which consisted of workshops to help build leadership and give non-partisan trainings related to voter registration,” Martinez said. PSU has students on the association’s board representing the university.
The association also keeps data on Oregon student voters. Of Oregon’s 18–29 year olds, 295,000 are not registered, whereas out of the 60–69 age group, only 36,000 are not registered.
ASPSU legislative affairs director and Tiffany Dollar is adamant about the power of the student vote. “When students vote, students win and legislators listen. This year in the 2012 legislative session, students won an additional $10 million for the Oregon Opportunity Grant, Oregon’s only form of need-based aid, along with the passage of the Textbook Affordability Act. Last year, OSA led the way in passing the Transfer Student Bill of Rights, HB3521, and the Military Training for Credit Bill, SB275,” she said.
Even with registering 109 students above the goal mark, the drive has experienced some road blocks. “Of course, there are challenges,” Kilbourn said. “One of the main challenges is that we are all students too, we have classes and other things that take up our schedules, so we need volunteers to help. Sometimes we can’t do class raps because students are taking tests or midterms or the professor just doesn’t want to give up their teaching time, which is absolutely fine.”
“The major challenge was getting people to be out everyday volunteering,” Martinez added.
Another issue with harnessing the student vote is the mobility and movement of young people in Oregon. Due to a technicality in state law, highly mobile students are taken off the official listings of voters for a given area. “Because Oregon has vote-by-mail, inactive voters are taken off the roles due to the possibility that they may have moved. This is especially true of students who move often,” Dollar said.
ASPSU has generally received good feedback from the PSU community, according to Martinez. “The feedback we have gotten has been from students, professors and administrators, it has all been positive. Students have thanked us for doing this because they have moved and not known that they needed to re-register, or they simply had forgotten to register,” Martinez said. “Professors and administrators have been happy that we are making students aware of how important voting is.”