ASUO members are working on another student voter education drive to complement their earlier voter registration drive before elections on Nov. 2.
They hope to give first-time-voting students a nonpartisan, educated view about the issues in the Lane County and Oregon election.
ASUO Legislative Affairs Coordinator Ben Eckstein said that although the drive is not yet in full power, the plans have been going well. The ASUO already has 50 volunteers for the drive and it projects that there will be close to 100 total volunteers by the end of the drive. Volunteers will talk to classes, hand out guides and call students up to election day.
“It’s going pretty well. It hasn’t quite kicked into full gear just yet,” Eckstein said. “But we do plan on distributing 7,000 voter education guides, making 15,000 ‘get out the vote’ phone calls and participating in some events to promote education and voter turnout.”
Eckstein said that although the campus groups worked together before the Oregon voter registration deadline, the ASUO has its own plan for getting more students to vote before the final deadline: Election Day on Nov. 2.
“Whenever we have overlapping events, we’ll make sure that we coordinate, but specifically, I think that right now the ASUO is planning its own education and ‘get out the vote’ efforts,” Eckstein said.
Some students were critical of the way the ASUO sought votes in their previous drive to register students.
“(There were) too many groups doing it; it feels a little overboard,” University senior Jason Williams said.
But University freshman Samantha Vincent supports the idea of educating student voters before the November elections.
“Most people aren’t going to take the time to figure out the issues,” Vincent said.
University junior Travis Knapp commented on the amount of student organizers working to get students registered. However, he did already notice the efforts during the drive to educate student voters.
“They’ve been everywhere on campus … I was bugged hundreds of times,” Knapp said. “I know they’ve been coming to classes, though.”
While ASUO representatives won’t be able to discuss every issue on the November ballot during 10 minute class presentations, Eckstein said they have experience getting a lot of information out in the small window of time they are provided.
“I haven’t had a chance to review the education presentation we’ll be using, but we have a lot of experience in condensing information into short periods of time, so I imagine it’ll give a basic overview of the ballot measures and how they promise to impact our education,” he said.
Eckstein said he will be working with the Bus Project, an organization geared towards mobilizing volunteers and activists, to put on “Trick or Vote,” an event on Halloween night in student-heavy neighborhoods that encourages students to get their ballots turned in by the deadline.
He added that gubernatorial candidates John Kitzhaber and Chris Dudley plan to be on campus on the elections deadline to help the ASUO collect ballots.
“With gubernatorial candidates, I’m sure there’s always a really high risk of plans changing, but for now, that is the plan, so that will be a really exciting event to finish off the vote drive,” Eckstein said.
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ASUO begins another student drive to increase voter awareness
Daily Emerald
October 20, 2010
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