For the past two and a half
months, students involved with MASSPIRG at UMass Dartmouth have dedicated a
great deal of their spare time to increasing youth voter turnout. Volunteers
registered 638 students to vote, and worked hard to turn them out to the polls
on Election Day. Together with coalition partners and receptive young people
across the country, these efforts comprised the largest midterm mobilization
effort in history!
Volunteers at UMass
Dartmouth worked hard to talk to over 1600 of their peers about the election.
They went door-to-door in the dorms, held tables in the residential and
commuter dining halls, spoke in classes and called registered voters to remind
them about the election. MASSPIRG volunteers helped make over 700 contacts with
their peers on Election Day alone, gathering over 600 signatures on a large
banner that hung by their table on Election Day. The banner proclaimed: “Voting
is Sweet.” Those who voted and/or signed the banner were also given some candy
to sweeten the deal.
A shuttle carried voters to
their polling location every hour, on the hour, from 8 am to 8 pm. As a direct
result of these students’ hard work, over 400 voters cast their ballots in this
2006 midterm election; this number is up from less than 350 in the 2002 midterm
election.
