Gearing up for the presidential election, the Center for Civic Engagement’s (CCE) Vote Everywhere ambassadors have been helping students get registered to vote.

Vote Everywhere, a nationwide program focused on increasing voter participation, has teamed up with the CCE. Student ambassadors are helping students get registered by handing out registration forms during classes, tabling every Tuesday outside the CCE office and awarding $1,000 to the living community who registers the greatest percentage of students before the last day of registration, Oct. 14.

Nick Doran, the Vote Everywhere ambassador team leader and a second-year graduate student studying public administration, said that it’s important for students to vote because they belong to a generation that will end up facing the long-term repercussions of candidates’ actions.

“The decisions that are being made now will not only affect everyone in the country now, but they will affect our generation for a longer term,” Doran said. “What is going to be decided today is going to affect us when we are adults. It’s important that we have a say in those decisions that are being made.”

The CCE encourages students to register in Broome County because absentee ballots can be difficult to understand and students who live on campus are able to vote nearby in the Mandela Room. In the last presidential election in 2012, about 1,700 students at BU voted. Approximately 981 students out of 1,600 registered and eligible students voted in the presidential primaries last spring.

Assistant Director Alison Handy Twang said that this past summer, the CCE helped register over 700 students at orientation.

“It was really a way for them to feel like they were part of the community here from the start of their time at Binghamton,” Twang said.

Sarah Knoell, a Vote Everywhere ambassador and a senior majoring in political science, said that part of their mission is to not only get students to register, but also to provide them with all the information they need to actually vote.

“Registering 100 students is great, but what difference does it really make if none of them go out and vote?” Knoell wrote in an email. “We try to give students all the tools they need to be able to vote, including general information about local candidates, polling site locations and any other information they may need.”

The CCE will be holding a viewing party of the first presidential debate in Lecture Hall 14 on Sept. 26. They will also be partnering with other student groups for a final push to register students on Sept. 27, which is Voter Registration Day, and to register as many students as possible before Oct. 14, the New York state voter registration deadline.

Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8 and the polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.
“The goal is really to get students involved in the political process so that they can be active citizens now and later in life,” Doran said. “Studies have shown that if students register and vote now at a young age, it becomes a habit and that they’re more likely to be active in the political process when they really have a lot at stake.”