In just 3 short hours, the NYU College Democrats in New York City registered an impressive 762 new voters. Even more attention grabbing was the fact that 200 of those registered were from battleground states.
Blog entry cross-posted on: http://collegedemsny.com/...
Yesterday, the NYU College Democrats held a massive campus voter registration drive that was a tremendous success. Harnessing the excitement and energy of their membership, the NYU College Democrats set up voter registration tables in every residence building from 7pm-10pm.
The focus of the event was not only to signup students to vote in New York, but to target students living in battleground states and get them filling out absentee ballots as well. NYU has the third largest population of students from battleground states attending college away from home, including over 1000 from Pennsylvania and over 500 each from Florida and Ohio. When you think about the close margin in Florida in the 2000 election, you realize how much of an understatement it is to say that NYU could have influence this November. In reality, we could literally decide the election result.
NYU College Democrats used the National Voter Registration Form (available from RockTheVote) to register students nationwide. Volunteers were trained in laws governing voter registration in 47 states (sorry WY, ND, and NH), and were able to answer questions, provide blank forms, and mail ballot requests for every single NYU student.
Tabling in each residence building was equipped with a laptop and a printer, capable of printing absentee ballot request forms for 39 different states.
Results from the 3-hour campus-wide voter registration drive were spectacular. We registered or obtained absentee ballots (or both) for 762 NYU students in three hours.
We don't have a rough count but we estimate as many as 150-200 of those are from swing states.
The printers and laptops using CD's with PDF files of absentee request forms were a huge success at every dorm, and I highly recommend that future 50-state voter registration drives copy our model.
By far the most successful one-day voter registration drive I've ever been a part of, and the most successful voter registration drive in the history of NYU.
Neal S. Shecter is president of the NYU College Democrats.