Community Organizations Providing Transportation to the Polls

voter van poster
This Election Day, Voter Van will be providing transportation from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. CCAR's Voter Van has provided transportation for students to the polls on election day since 2000. (Kamari Stewart/Pleasantville Press)

Posted By: Kamari Stewart November 6, 2018

Pace students who do not have transportation to the polls can get a ride in a university-provided Voter Van.

The service is provided through Pace University’s Center for Community Action and Research (CCAR), which has also led on-campus voter registration efforts this fall. Tyler Kalahar, CCAR’s Program Coordinator, said more than 200 new voters have registered since the beginning of the semester.

However, Kalahar noted their work is not done once people are registered to vote. The next step is to actually get them to the polls.

“Most students carpool with each other … We know it’s not an option for everybody, so we like having the Voter Van available,” he said.

CCAR began running its Voter Van program in 2000. It began as a coalition of people from throughout the university who felt the need to educate students and get them registered to vote, according to Heather Novak, Associate Director of CCAR.

“As time went on, we understood that voter registration wasn’t enough, because you can register someone to vote and they still wouldn’t go and vote. The voter van was trying to make it so that we could make sure that students could vote no matter what,” said Novak.

Kalahar has run the Voter Van program for the past three years. For the 2016 presidential election, around 50 students used the service out of 300 who were registered. However, no students used the Voter Van for last year’s county legislation races.

He expects around 50 students to use the Voter Van in this election, though that could be undercut by the fact that this year, Uber and Lyft are providing promotional codes to voters who need a quick ride to the polls.

CCAR is not the only organization to provide transportation to the polls. Kalahar also pointed to Community Voices Heard, a grassroots organization run by women of color and low-income families to secure racial, social, and economic justice for all New Yorkers.

Community Voices Heard has an action group comprised of volunteer workers on election day that provide transportation to the polls for seniors, those who are homeless, and others who may have trouble accessing their polling places. The group also hand delivers ballots to voters on Election Day and returns them to the Board of Elections, according to Kalahar.

Polling places will be open until 9 p.m. You can find your nearest polling place here.