With the 2024 election underway, several student groups on campus have spent the past weeks working to reach student voters and encourage voter registration.
Oregon Students Public Interest Research Group is a student-funded, student-run, nonpartisan organization on campus that has been campaigning to get students registered to vote. The New Voters Project is a project run by OSPIRG with the goal of increasing civic engagement throughout campus.
“We really believe in peer-to-peer contacts,” Kali Kleven, who runs the New Voters Project at UO, said. “We believe that when students hear something from someone who they can relate to, it sticks more.”
OSPIRG uses strategies such as tabling and working with coalitions to reach students. The organization has teamed up with other groups on campus, such as Associated Students of the University of Oregon, to reach more voters.
“We get people registered to vote, and then we contact them ahead of elections to make sure they know where their polling locations are,” said OSPIRG Chapter Chair Sam Broussard.
According to Kleven, low voter turnout amongst college students is often due to a lack of knowledge and resources about registration and voting.
“I was really lucky in high school. They sat us down and registered us to vote. A lot of people don’t have that, especially if you grew up in a home where there’s political tension, it might not be an open conversation,” Kleven said. “People are just genuinely not aware, I think, of the steps they can take and how easy it is to actually register and vote.”
Historically, 18 to 29-year-olds have had the lowest voter turnouts among all age groups, with percentages trending higher with older age groups.
“Voting is absolutely important for anyone who has any interest in not only politics, but just their local government,and even culture because culture is downstream of politics,” UO College Republicans President Cassidy Perkins said.
UO Republicans did not run any voter registration events, but are working to do more initiatives and charity work in the future, according to Perkins.
According to the US Census Bureau, in 2022, only 49.1% of 18 to 24-year-olds were registered to vote.
Another group working to increase voter registration is the College Democrats at University of Oregon. They have been running a voter registration drive and tabling at the Erb Memorial Union’s Fishbowl and Amphitheater.
“The more young people that vote, the more that young people have to be taken seriously as a voter bloc. When not very many young people are voting, when the politicians are trying to figure out what to do in order to get more votes, they’re not going to be looking at young people,” Bryson Petterborg, president of the College Democrats at University of Oregon, said.
College Democrats at University of Oregon ran a voter registration drive from Oct. 9 to Oct. 11 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., and continued their efforts until Oct. 15, the voter registration deadline in Oregon.
“Whatever that issue is for you, whatever you’re interested in, it’s really important that you go out and vote and campaign on the issues so that you can get that specific issue addressed,” Petterborg said.