Despite finishing 2,755 votes short of its 10,000 goal, the student voter registration drive is being considered the most successful voter registration drive in the state, according to Emily McLain, Oregon Student Association Board Chair and 2007-08 ASUO president.
The ASUO Executive, with help from OSPIRG and other non-partisan voter registration groups, managed to register 7,245 voters before the Oct. 14 deadline.
“Students at the U of O registered 918 students to vote on the last day to register,” McLain said. “That was impressive. Each of those students who registered raises the collective voice of students in the electoral process.”
The number reported to OSA, 5,696, did not include groups like College Republicans and University Club Sports. These groups and others participated in the drive as non-partisan volunteers but were not a part of the OSA’s counted groups.
The University beat larger in-state schools, such as Portland State University, which registered just more than 4,000 voters. PSU has about 3,500 more students than the University of Oregon.
Even without the non-OSA counted votes, the University’s numbers are competitive with major out-of-state schools. The University of Florida and Texas A&M registered just over 5,000 votes each, McLain said.
However, the voter registration deadline for some states has not passed, so it is hard to calculate how well the University did on a national scale.
The ASUO used a variety of tactics to convince students to register, including doing more than 200 class raps and engaging students one-on-one on and off campus. More than 100 students volunteered in the drive, said Jose Bustillos, the ASUO lead vote coordinator.
The ASUO hadn’t factored in off-campus groups in setting the 10,000 vote goal, Bustillos said, which contributed to the drive coming short of its goal. Those groups include partisan campaigns and registration efforts that were not working on behalf of the ASUO.
Dave Carvo, who regularly sits at the intersection of E. 13th Avenue and University Street with his bike trailer sporting home-made Obama signs, was one of those factors.
Carvo, who registered voters as an independent Obama supporter, said he managed to register at least a few hundred students. He has now shifted his efforts from voter registration to reminding people to vote.
The failure to hit 10,000 registrations doesn’t seem to have phased anyone involved in the effort.
“I’d call it an overwhelming success,” said ASUO President Sam Dotters-Katz. “We did succeed in energizing the students to register to vote.” Dotters-Katz called the drive a victory for all students.
“I think it’s great that we placed so high in the county compared to other colleges,” said ASUO senator Derek Nix. “The goal we set was very high, but we knew that going into it. Now we’re excited for voter-registration.”
Now that the deadline has passed, the ASUO will be focusing on get-out-the-vote efforts to inform students about the issues and remind them to vote.
“We want to follow through,” Bustillos said. “We don’t want to register 7,000 students and only have 1,000 turn out to vote.”
[email protected]