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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t happen on the presidential year, was six.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kalahar said there are three main reasons young people do not vote. The first, \u201cabove all other demographics,\u201d is time, he said. Young people tend to say they do not have time to go vote.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second reason is transportation to the polls. To address that problem, Pace University provides transportation for students<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n The third reason students give for not voting, according to Kalahar, is that they do not feel they are informed.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the one we focus on the most,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n CCAR provides students with information about who is on the ballot and directs them to other resources.<\/p>\n
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