Spring Break
Local registration campaign finds success
Caroline Topolinski
Issue date: 10/11/04 Section: News
|
Both Milner and the Normal Public Library registered people to vote.
The College Democrats and Illinois Day of Election Advocates were also organizations that registered voters. This was Milner's first year registering voters.
"491 people registered to vote at Milner. 322 registered to vote Tuesday. Mostly students and professors came here to Milner but we had some people from the community come as well," Angela Bonnell, government documents librarian said.
"We were here registering voters from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. We were shocked at the amount of people that showed up, but we were very pleased," Michelle Kauffman, librarian assistant in government documents added.
Even though Bonnell and Kauffman were the only ones deputized to register voters at Milner, they received a lot of help from their staff of general reference and documents or GRD.
"The whole GRD staff played a big part in making the whole process go smoothly. They were very helpful and went up to people in line making sure they had all the right documents," Bonnell stated.
"The students were also very cooperative. Some waited in line for a couple hours but yet were very nice and told us how glad they were that we were doing this," she added.
Normal Public Library also registered people to vote.
"We registered an estimate of 800 plus people all together and registered about 250 on the last day," Ruth Reeves, director of adult services, said.
Judy Poultney, a librarian, said this year more people registered to vote than four years ago.
"We have never had a year like this before but this year went much more easily because we had more help with the registering," Poultney added
The women's league of voters came to the library Sunday and Tuesday to help register people in the community along with educating voters on certain issues.
The College Democrats were also all over campus registering students to vote. According to a press release, the group registered over 2,650 people.
ISU College Democrat President Bill Gugerty said he was impressed with the end results.
"This really shows the power that students have when they come together and believe in something," Gugerty said.
IDEA also registered students to vote. The group was located in front of Fell Hall Tuesday and Wednesday from noon to 2 p.m. helping students register or answering students' questions about voting.
"It seemed like we got a lot of people to vote. Students were constantly either registering or filling out a change of address form," David Currier said.
But IDEA is not stopping with just registering voters, they have a lot planned in-between now and the Election Day.
"We are talking with the ARH to show the final debates on the large screen in Watterson. There is also going to be a Candidate Awareness campaign where our goal is to make students more aware of who they are voting for," Currier added.