The leader of the organization spearheading voter registration efforts at Pace University’s Pleasantville campus believes student turnout will be high in today’s election.

Tyler Kalahar, Program Coordinator for the Center for Community Action and Research (CCAR), said there is no comprehensive data about how many students plan to vote. However, there are approximately 800 to 1000 people who are registered to vote at their on-campus address.

Kalahar said around 62 students submitted absentee ballots through his office for this election. “To give a perspective on that and how that is different, the amount of people that brought in or filled out an absentee ballot application for us in the previous midterm election, so the ones that don’t happen on the presidential year, was six.”

Kalahar said registering students is not difficult. In fact, he said a law passed this spring in New York that automatically registers people to vote when they turn 18 has facilitated registration.

“We are focused on the thing called Get Out the Vote, shortened as GOTV. We want to see the number increased between the people that are registered and the people that are actually going to the polls.”

Kalahar said there are three main reasons young people do not vote. The first, “above all other demographics,” is time, he said. Young people tend to say they do not have time to go vote.

“So, we tell people, it takes 10 minutes to get to the polls and back and about 10 minutes to actually vote when you get there, so it takes about 20 minutes to vote. If you have enough time to put a Halloween costume together, which I know a lot of students did, then you have enough time to go vote.”

The second reason is transportation to the polls. To address that problem, Pace University provides transportation for students from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. CCAR has also partnered with Civic Nation and their Young Indivisibles group to provide Uber codes that cover a $14 round trip for students to get to the polls.

The third reason students give for not voting, according to Kalahar, is that they do not feel they are informed.

“This is the one we focus on the most,” he said.

CCAR provides students with information about who is on the ballot and directs them to other resources.

“We recommend students to go to Vote411.org, which is by the League of Women Voters, and you can fill out your ballot, you get all the information about the ballot, and how to break down what’s on the ballot.”

Moving forward, Kalahar said in the spring CCAR will put together a student-faculty-staff coalition committee for the 2020 elections.

Heather Novak, Associate Director for CCAR, anticipates a large voter turnout as well.

“We have registered a lot of people. I think the thing that told me something was different this year is that when the semester started, a student came to ask for a voter registration form to register to vote so that they could vote in the primary. Now, that never happens.”

 

“The fact that students would come in wanting to participate in the primary is totally not normal,” she said.

Novak said students are feeling more invested in the election. “If you opt out, the person who participates’ voice is so much louder because your voice is not there to counteract that voice. I think people are feeling more responsible. And whereas students might in the past have just done community service, worked in the communities on the issues that they care about, they are starting to realize that if they care about these issues then they have to be more involved in understanding how these things happen, not just how to fix them.”

A report in Time magazine predicted high turnout nationwide at the polls, based on early voting numbers in other states.