Organizers for Pack the Polls, an initiative to encourage students to vote, are moving along in planning recruitment strategies, according to Ches McDowell, a senior in political science and vice chair of the College Republicans helping to plan the campaign.
Jay Dawkins, student body president and senior in civil engineering, said organizers are looking for between 50 and 100 volunteers who can present voter registration sheets in classrooms across campus.
“Volunteers have to go through one training session before they are going out and registering,” he said. “[We are] teaching them ways to convey the message in a non-partisan fashion. If there are people that we feel like aren’t capable of sidelining their own political views, they will not participate.”
According to Dawkins, promoters will e-mail potential volunteers within the next week, and McDowell said they will have their first meeting Aug. 27.
“Shortly thereafter, we’re going to start hitting classrooms,” McDowell said.
Professors will play a large role in the success of this venture, Dawkins said, because they have to approve students coming into their classes to give voting presentations.
Dawkins said organizers have spoken to professors who will help the students promote the campaign.
“The [profrssors’] role will be communicating with their peers because we feel like that is a better approach than a student just asking to barge into their classroom,” Dawkins said.
By registering inside classrooms, McDowell said organizers hope to register 10,000 new voters.
But the campaign will also target voters who are registered in areas outside Raleigh.
“The likelihood of them voting absentee is very small,” McDowell said.
After the Oct. 10 voter registration deadline, Pack the Polls will still help steer students to vote, Dawkins said.
“The push then will be sending them a reminder to vote,” he said. “If we have the staff resources, we’ll probably do some follow-up questions with the contact information that we have to gauge how successful it was.”
There may also be a way to see if and how a person voted in the election, Dawkins said.
McDowell said organizers have also applied for a $500 grant to pay for transportation costs to shuttle voters on a bus to and from the voting station at Pullen Arts Center.
According to Dawkins, volunteers must make sure students on the bus are not promoting an individual candidate — meaning no one can bring campaign materials aboard.
Harvard Ayers, an anthropology professor from Appalachian State University who helped put on voter-registration drives in Boone, has helped guide the project, McDowell said.
Ayers will also be training the volunteers, McDowell said.
More than anything, McDowell said, organizers want students to know that voting trumps any political agenda.
“It’s going to be close,” he said. “North Carolina is a battleground state.”
McDowell said he is frustrated when he hears complaints from people who do not vote.
“You have no right to criticize anybody in any branch if you didn’t vote,” he said.
