With election day less than two months away, the UW-Madison branch of the New Voters Project announced they have already registered 3,218 young voters, and said they hope to register a total of 10,000 by November 2.
The group's Assistant Organizing Director, Erica Garry, said an additional goal is to maintain high levels of young voters in the future.
\It's not just about the Nov. 2 election. It's about the long term,"" she said.
Aside from its Madison campus work, the non-partisan New Voters Project is working nationwide in swing states to get people in the ""new voter"" demographic to cast their votes. It has 200 college campus programs in five states, and 50 of those are in Wisconsin.
Garry is working in cooperation with university administration to make voter registration a part of campus life. Plans include having voter registration set up at the Dean of Admissions office and during student orientation, a process which has already begun.
Rachel Fronk, a UW-Madison junior and New Voters Project intern, said 10,000 new voters is an attainable goal. To ensure this, Fronk said they hope to set up registration of entire floors through resident assistants in the dorms, as well as reminding people to go to their polling place if they have not already by the afternoon of election day.
""Some people didn't want to be bothered,"" said UW-Madison freshman Rachel Carr, a volunteer for The New Voters Project. ""More people seemed willing to listen to what we had to say.""
Kody Drost, a UW-Madison freshman, found where his polling place was via the New Voters Project. He shied away from filling his information out for it, though, stating ""I'm going to vote, but I'll do it on my terms ... it's for my vote and my country.""
A UW-Madison junior and chair of Students for Kerry, Rachel Donald is positive about the results of the New Voters Project campaign. ""By having as many college students as possible, we're opening a broad spectrum of people to vote who were ineligible last presidential election,"" she said.
