The Vols and Gators are going head-to-head, off the football field. The Howard Baker Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee and the Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida are competing to register the most students to vote.
Three UT organizations: the Student Government Association, the College Republicans and the College Democrats are working together on the project.
“Representation is important, and this election is one of the most important elections we’re probably going to have in a long time because of where the candidates are,” Alex Kaplan, senior in political science and sociology, said. Kaplan helped with voter registration as a Baker Ambassador and an SGA member.
The Baker Center is encouraging students to vote in part because students do not tend to vote as much as other demographics. During the 2012 election, according to a study done by the National Study of Learning Voting and Engagement (NSLVE), only 61 percent of students voted at UF. UT was behind with only 41 percent of students voting in the 2012 presidential election.
“I don’t think you can call it a democracy if only 40 percent of the people vote,” Benjamin Bailey, senior in political science who has worked on the competition for a class, said. “For instance, there are 440,000 people that live in Knox County, and last year in the general election year, only nine percent of the people voted. I think that’s abysmal, and like I said, that’s not a democracy. That’s not even an aristocracy or an oligarchy.”
In 2012, young voters were one of the key voting blocks for Obama’s victory, despite having a low registration rate. Nissa Dahlin-Brown, associate director of the Baker Center and organizer of the competition, believes the student vote is important.
“All the laws we make now are the ones that are going to impact (college students),” Dahlin-Brown said. “My age group are the ones that are making the decisions because we’re the ones that go out and vote. So students just really need to learn about the issues and go out and vote.”
UT has registered 765 people to vote as of Sept. 13.
“We’ve had outstanding success, and this competition has been going on since Sept. 1,” Bailey said. “We actually got in it a week later than Florida did, so they had a head start, and we are beating them.”
The president is not the only position being decided this November. Many elected positions will also be on the ballot.
“(Local and state offices) are extremely important too. I mean, we don’t have any US senators running right now,” Dahlin-Brown said. “Look at the other candidates running because it’s very, very important. School board, county commission, city council, whatever.”
The Baker Center posts updates on how the universities are doing online at bakercenter.utk.edu.
Students can register in person on Pedestrian Walkway from now until next week, at Hodges Library on Monday, Sept. 19 from 11 a.m.-2 p.m., anytime at the Baker Center, or online at utk.turbovote.org. Oct. 1 is the last day to register to vote at UT. Early voting begins on Oct. 31 until Nov. 3, and election day is Nov. 8.
SGA takes part in a voter registration drive on Ped Walkway.
