Student voter registration drive called a success

ORONO – A push to register student voters at area college campuses appears to be working, according to campus and state officials.

The New Voters Project is an effort led by the Secretary of State’s Office under its Promote the Vote program. The goal of the grass-roots voter mobilization campaign is to increase the participation of 18- to 24-year-olds in the 2004 election.

“In Maine, the New Voters Project has been tremendously successful in registering young people to vote,” Kate Simmons, the project’s state director, said Friday. “There’s a buzz about voting on campuses throughout Maine.”

Approximately 5,300 students across the state have filled out and turned in voter registration cards as part of the effort, Simmons said.

Higher-education officials met in September at the University of Maine System office to pledge their support for voter education and registration initiatives on their campuses. Some campuses already had similar programs in place, such as the University of Maine’s UMaine UVote.

“We believe that our outreach to new voters at colleges and universities, with the help of the New Voters Project, has been the most comprehensive of its kind in Maine’s history,” Deputy Secretary of State Doug Dunbar said Friday.

Students who live both on and off campus at UM have filled out more than 1,000 voter registration cards. Some were new registrations, while others were updating information such as address and name, Kenda Scheele, UM’s associate dean for students, explained Friday.

The colleges then deliver the cards to area towns or send them to the Secretary of State’s Office to be processed.

“We’re trying to talk to students about being politically active because the 18-to-24 group is the one that votes the least often,” Scheele said.

Eastern Maine Community College in Bangor also participated in the project and received 85-90 voter registration cards.

“It looks like a lot of students are going to be traveling home to vote in their respective communities,” Jeff Harris, the college’s director of housing and residential life, said Friday.

Maine compares well to other states both in terms of voter turnout and in its percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds who vote, but Dunbar says the state can do better in both areas.

“Maine led the nation in voter turnout in two of the last three presidential elections,” Dunbar said. “Part of our goal with Promote the Vote is to make sure that Maine is once again number one in voter turnout.”

In its highest turnout ever, 73 percent of the voting-age population in Maine voted in 1992. Dunbar hopes to exceed that percentage in this year’s election.

There have been problems at UM in the past with residents contesting student voter registrations. This year, however, Orono Town Clerk Wanda Thomas doesn’t expect any problems.

“It looks to me like they’re trying to encourage everyone to vote,” Thomas said. “I don’t anticipate [anyone contesting]. I don’t know who would be doing it.”

Encouraging Mainers in the 18-to-24-year-old age bracket to vote has been an ongoing project over the last several years, and this isn’t the end, according to state and university officials.

“I really hope that all the contacts and volunteer networks that we’ve built are able to go on and educate and engage young people,” Simmons said.