NAACP and Mary-PIRG join forces for voter registration drive

Sophomore Cole Garvan of Mary-PIRG and freshman Madison Wells-James of NAACP hold up signs encouraging people to register to vote at a registration drive outside of Stamp Student Union on Nov. 19. (Simone Ebongo Bayehe/The Black Explosion)

College Park’s student chapters of the NAACP and Maryland Public Interest Research Group (Mary-PIRG) came together on Nov. 19 to host a voter registration drive in front of the Stamp Student Union. 

The drive was created to promote and encourage student civic engagement, a task which has seen a significant increase within the past five years.

“We know that students turn out to vote at a much lower rate, but the more people who are registered to vote, the more likely they are to show up at the polls,” said Sonja Neve, a senior environmental science and policy major and chapter president of Mary-PIRG. 

“Obviously they can only vote if they register, but folks who register close to the voting day – I think it’s like 85% – end up voting, so we make sure that students are voting and being engaged in issues that they care about,” said Neve.

According to a 2018 National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement (NSLVE) campus report, the voter registration rate of College Park students who were eligible to vote and voted in the midterm elections during the five-year period from 2014 to 2018 increased by 8.6% to approximately 85.3% of students registered. Of those registered to vote, 53.9% voted, increasing the voting rate of registered students by 28.8% during this period.

This increasing shift towards change and civic engagement won the University of Maryland, College Park a Gold Seal for Excellence in Student Voter Agreement by The ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge (an initiative of Civic Nation, a 501(c)(3) organization) on November 12, 2019.

Strides like these are what drove Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center freshman Madison Wells-James into joining College Park’s NAACP chapter. As a member of the organization’s activism committee, she hopes her advocacy helps motivate others do what first drove her to the Association - to be the change they wish to see.

“We just want to encourage people to get involved because their voice matters, especially in a time like this,” Wells-James said. “The next election is probably one of the most important elections that our generation, specifically, will ever be involved in so I think it’s important that we encourage people to register to vote.”

While the numbers are encouraging, Tobi Olagunju, an information systems, operations management and business analytics junior, who currently serves as College Park’s NAACP chapter vice president, stresses the need to continue to inform and empower potential voters to make decisions that will best shape their world as the 2020 presidential elections draw near.

“I think if you care about the world you live in, if you care about the country you live in – the best thing you can do is register to vote,” Olagunju said. “Do your thing and make a difference.”

Although the drive was hosted by the campus NAACP and Mary-PIRG chapters, Neve believes that all student groups should be interested in advocating for student civic engagement.

“No matter who you’re voting for – our votes matter,” Neve said. “it’s cool to have coalition partners like NAACP and Mary-PIRG because it shows that we have this in common, just getting students to become more engaged in issues we care about.”

Although some would say the groups are starting the party early, for computer science and psychology double major sophomore and Mary-PIRG secretary Ashna Mediratta, events like these are but a taste of the incoming campus-base political awareness events that will soon increase in visibility.

“Next semester it would be a lot of just asking if they’ve registered to vote, telling them how to vote, dates of the primaries, dates of the general election, making sure people are informed,” Mediratta said. “And so it’d be very similar to what this is, but just more awareness. More days like this more people out, more flowers, more pins, more excitement and stuff like that.”

Mary-PIRG is currently in the process of readying for the spring 2020 launch of its New Voters Project campaign. Working with TerpsVote, the project will raise awareness on how to register new voters, assist students with absentee ballots, informing students on how they can be counted in the census here in College Park and handing out any prudent voter information in an effort to knock down what Mediratta called any “barrier to voting.”

UMCP NAACP held a watch party for the fifth Democratic Presidential Candidate Debate the following evening where they hosted a brief and objective discussion before and after the debate, analyzing the different candidates and their policies and what attendees liked and disliked.

For the coalition partners, these are the tools that will help them mobilize and bring attention to the importance of the student vote as Election 2020 draws near.