IU South Bend Exceeds Voter Registration Goal

Campus in the Running for National Award

Project Part of 32-State Effort to Register 40,000 State College Students and 350,000 Young Citizens to Vote in 2006

"Voter registration is the first step toward active involvement in the electoral process. In 2006, we’ve already topped our 2004 registration record and are determined to continue the momentum through Election Day." –Elizabeth A. Bennion, IU South Bend

South Bend - On Saturday, September 30, Professor Elizabeth Bennion came into the office to count the registration forms collected during a two-week push at Indiana University South Bend. As a participant in a nationwide voter registration project, IU South Bend had a minimum registration requirement of 373 registrations. These registration requirements were set by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, based on student enrollment numbers for campuses participating in the Electoral Voice voter registration project. Bennion had set the goal higher, publicizing a goal of 400 completed registration cards. With one week left in the campaign, Bennion has announced that the campus has already surpassed this ambitious goal. The campus has already broken previous campus records of 196 forms in the 2002 congressional elections, and 413 forms collected by both partisan and non-partisan groups during the 2004 presidential election. Bennion credits the expansion of classroom-based registration efforts for the remarkable success of the registration campaign during a non-presidential election year.

According to Bennion, 117 registration forms were collected at voter registration tables on campus, while 190 were collected by professors in their classrooms, and 126 by student volunteers who visited classrooms to talk about the importance of voter registration and participation. Students registered from 11 Indiana counties and two Michigan counties. St. Joseph County (280) and Elkhart County (82) residents filled out the majority of forms, with a significant number of students from LaPorte (15) and Marshall (15) registering. Other counties represented include: Allen, Fulton, Kosciusko, LaGrange, Lake, Marion, and Starke, along with Berrien and Cass counties in Michigan.

With 13 classes yet to report, Bennion expects the total number of voter registrations to increase by at least 40. With the help of student volunteers from IU South Bend’s Civil Rights Heritage Center who will continue tabling efforts next week, Bennion suggested that the total number of registrations could rise as high as 500. For Bennion, this is very good news. "A study by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) found that 80 percent of young people registered to vote in 2004 actually cast a ballot. Young people ages 18-24 are the least likely of any age group to vote, but recent surveys and voting trends suggest that this is a group ready to be mobilized. As long as they are registered, they can be convinced to go to the polls on Election Day. Politicians need to begin targeting young people and talking about the issues that matter most to Generation Y (18-29 year old) voters: the war in Iraq, college tuition, high-paying jobs."

Indiana University South Bend's registration campaign is part of their participation in a nationwide voter registration project taking place on over 70 college campuses. IU South Bend professor, Elizabeth Bennion, is the principal investigator for the national registration project. School administrators, professors, and students at over 70 colleges and universities will register young voters using a mix of peer-to-peer outreach, encouragement from professors, email, and direct mail. Having already reached 116 percent of their campus goal, IU South Bend is in the running for the $1,000 first prize, $500 second prize, or $250 third prize for collecting the highest percentage over goal. They face stiff competition from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, a campus that achieved 133 percent of its total goal in a single weekend orientation session for student moving into campus housing. Bloomsburg is currently the leading campus, having already achieved 144 percent of its campus registration goal.

Professor Bennion and Notre Dame professor David Nickerson will work with AASCU to track and evaluate which techniques register the most state college students and find out which of them is most likely to result in a vote cast on Election Day. The results can be applied by future voter registration projects at all public colleges, which enroll more than six million students.

AASCU's project is part of Young Voter Strategies' nationwide, non-partisan effort to register 350,000 voters in 2006. "State colleges and universities could be goldmines for nonprofits and political campaigns reaching out to register young voters. More than six million students attend state schools in the U.S., many on campuses with tens of thousands enrolled," said Heather Smith, Director of Young Voter Strategies. "Coming out of this project, we’ll have data to help create a comprehensive toolkit for future state college registration projects."

To build on 2004, the Young Voter Strategies project will register 350,000 18-29 year olds nationwide through innovative internet, email, and mobile phone strategies, streamlined peer-to-peer outreach, presentations by high school teachers and college professors, and creative outreach by musicians. Each group will focus on a specific subset of 18-29 year olds, such as single women, community college students, students at public four-year colleges, African-Americans, young Latinos, Evangelical youth, and high school seniors.

American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) members work to extend higher education to all citizens. AASCU represents more than 400 public colleges and universities in the U.S., which enroll more than three million students or 55 percent of the enrollment at all public four-year institutions. AASCU’s American Democracy Project is a multi-campus initiative that seeks to create an intellectual and experiential understanding of civic engagement for undergraduates enrolled at AASCU’s member institutions. The goal of the project is to produce graduates who understand and are committed to engaging in meaningful actions as citizens in a democracy. www.aascu.org

Young Voter Strategies (YVS), a project of the Graduate School of Political Management at The George Washington University, with support from The Pew Charitable Trusts, provides the public, parties, candidates, consultants and non-profits with data on the youth vote and tools to effectively mobilize this electorate for upcoming elections. YVS is committed to make the targeting of young voters a more permanent part of electoral strategies. www.youngvoterstrategies.org. For a full list of the groups involved in 2006 young voter registration efforts, contact Kathleen Barr at Young Voter Strategies. 202-994-9528 or katbarr@gwu.edu.

For information contact: Elizabeth A. Bennion, (574) 520-4128