With a new same-day voter registration act recently cleared by the state Justice department, Student Government and College Democrats are trying to get as many people registered to vote as possible during this year’s Pack the Polls.

Seth Palmer, a senior in political science, said Student Government has been out trying to register as many students as possible before the upcoming October local elections.

“We’ve been out at Cates Crawl, Convocation, the Welcome Back dinner and Chillin’ & Grillin’,” Palmer said.”We’ve actually registered a lot of people.”

Pack the Polls participants have been taking advantage of popular student areas.

College Democrats joined the Pack the Polls collaborative effort Monday by handing out popsicles in the Brickyard, according to Tara Ilsley, a junior in political science.

“Our main focus is registering students to vote for upcoming elections because not many people voted in local elections, and it’s very important, just like the national elections,” Ilsley said.

Ilsley said considering the amount of incoming freshmen, voter registration should be a top priority.

“I recently read that we have the largest freshman class [ever this year], and most of those students are probably not registered to vote,” she said.

The same-day voter registration act that recently cleared the North Carolina Department of Justice allows voters to immediately cast ballots at one-stop voting sties during the final days of the election, Doucette said. Before this legislation, voters who did not register weeks before election dates were prohibited from voting.

According to Doucette, since a lot of students move residences yearly, without the new same-day act, students who had not updated their information would find out later next year during national elections that they were not able to vote. However, he said, with this new act, students can just register closer to the election.

He said by gathering student names in their database, Student Government can help keep students informed of upcoming student and local elections.

“They will know when May primaries are and when the elections are,” Doucette said.

According to Doucette, Student Government’s ultimate goal is to have some form of transportation leaving Talley Student Center every 30 minutes during elections and taking students to a voting site.

“[We would] have food and just keep this going,” he said. “[But] all of that is really theoretical, and I’m not sure we can really pull it off in the time we’ve got.”

The same-day voter registration act will not go into to effect until Sept. 1, according to Palmer, so the act will not play much of a role in Pack the Polls initially.

Ilsley said although the same-day registration will not affect this year’s Pack the Polls, it will definitely play a major role during next year’s push for registration.

“It’ll be a huge factor [in the next election],” she said.

Palmer echoed Ilsley.

“It will probably not have a huge effect on the Pack the Polls drive just because of the time constraint,” he said. “It will probably just mean that we will keep trying to get people informed.”

Multiple attempts were made to contact a couple of leaders of the College Republicans Tuesday afternoon, and none were answered.