For this year’s November election, residential communities will go head-to-head to see who can register the most student voters. While only two communities will win a cash prize of either $1,000 or $500 from the Center for Civic Engagement (CCE), associate professor of political science Jonathan Krasno said that all Binghamton University residents will benefit from the civic participation.

The idea for the competition was thought of by BU alum Kyle Seeley, who graduated with a degree in political science in 2011 and is currently the upstate New York regional organizing director for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. While doing research with Krasno during his junior year, Seeley thought of the concept to make registering on campus less of a chore.

“My research was focused around how turnout on campuses could affect elections,” Seeley said. “Then, I was thinking that one way to incentivize registering to vote is to create competition; competition between living communities and creating a competitive environment seemed like an interesting concept.”

With the help of the CCE and Krasno, the competition was implemented for the 2012 election. That year, Krasno observed that 1,719 campus residents voted in the election — a 32 percent increase from 2008.

In the 2004 election, Krasno said, there was an effort made by the University to encourage competition between organizations on campus, but it was too difficult to keep track of. While the increase in voting in 2012 is not entirely due to the new competition, he said, he believes it played a part in increasing BU’s voter turnout.

“If a large number of BU students plop down at that election board with thousands of voter registrations, adult politicians in Broome County will pee their pants,” Krasno said. “It represents a massive voting bloc that has the power to swing elections.”

Each week until the competition ends, Krasno observes the newly registered voters through the Broome County Board of Elections. By matching students’ names and birthdays to those on the registration roll, he counts each student and the residential community in which they live.

Krasno said this competition is particularly interesting to him because BU’s campus is a largely ignored campaign stop for candidates in the county.

“Show me any other place in Broome County where there are thousands of votes that can be gained in a single location,” Krasno said. “We’re talking about thousands of potential voters that are completely ignored by local politicians out of the belief that they will never participate in elections.”

Voting locally, he said, is important for students. Krasno said issues like better public transportation and safety are platforms that politicians should continue to address, and students have the power to demand them.

“I want students to think of Binghamton as a place they can stay after graduation, and I want locals to engage students,” he said. “Even if we have only 3,000 on-campus students registered, local politicians have to figure out what to do to engage these people. Three thousand people is not something they can ignore.”

Conrad Taylor, a junior majoring in political science and a Binghamton City Council member, participated in the competition in 2014 while living in College-in-the-Woods. He said that he personally registered more than 200 students on campus, and later his City Council campaign was able to register around 1,500 voters throughout the Binghamton area.

Taylor said he was initially inspired to participate in the competition not only for the prize, but also because becoming registered to vote at a young age encourages active voting and civic participation throughout a person’s life.

In addition, Taylor said he agreed with the sentiment that students voting in Broome County have the ability to pivot elections.

“Getting students registered to vote should be paramount for every university,” Taylor said. “Since the county is pretty evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, no matter your party affiliation, your vote could decide the election. The congressional election in our district, for example, is rated as one of the closest in the country.”

There are 6,928 eligible voters living on campus. So far, 1,338 on-campus students have registered in this year’s competition to vote in Broome County. Leading the competition is College-in-the-Woods with 23.17 percent of registered eligible voters, with Hinman College coming in second with 21.69 percent and Dickinson Community in third with 21.34 percent. Hillside Community and Susquehanna Community are in last place, with 7.81 percent and 5.21 percent registered eligible voters, respectively.

The competition ends on Oct. 11, and the two winning communities’ governments are free to spend the prize however they see fit. Check Page 3 of Pipe Dream for competition updates on student-voter registration.