With less than two weeks left to register voters, the New Voters Project has exceeded its goal of registering unprecedented numbers of 18- to 24-year-olds in Wisconsin. So far, the NVP has registered more than 124,000 18- to 24-year-olds in the highly publicized swing state.
Madison alone has registered more than 30,000 18- to 24-year-olds, which includes those recruited from both campus and outreach community programs.
With a national goal to register 265,000 youth, the NVP has already registered 308,145 young voters, thus also exceeding the national goal.
“Our goal [in Madison] was to get 10,000 registered by Oct. 2, but the official city deadline to register is Oct. 19. Those who are unregistered can go to the city clerk’s office and receive a 12-day mail-in to get registered,” said Erica Garry, the NVP organizer for Wisconsin.
So far, the NVP has reached one in five 18- to 24-year-old unregistered voters in Wisconsin and gotten them registered.
“While our main initiative is to go out into the communities where young people are, typically asking young people on college campuses to register receives a higher response rate. About 60 percent of youth on college campuses registered to vote and about 40 percent of youth in the communities registered,” Garry said.
Now that most of the registering is complete, the NVP is transitioning into its ‘Get Out the Vote’ phase, which consists of many canvassing techniques.
“We will be contacting 75 percent of people at UW-Madison Sunday through Thursday,” Garry said. “On Saturdays and Sundays we will be canvassing and handing out issues that are up for debate in the election and information about candidates in a non-partisan way.”
The NVP will launch a presidential youth debate soon. About 5,000 people between 13 and 35 have contributed questions for the debate. The presidential candidates will post their responses to a select few questions on the NVP website Oct. 11. Each candidate will have a week to submit a rebuttal.
By Oct. 19, all rebuttals will be placed on NVP’s website so that young people can make a democratic decision on electing a candidate.
Rachel Donald, chair of Students for Kerry, applauds the efforts of the New Voters Project.
“I applaud it as a very noble cause,” Donald said. “Everyone has a responsibility to make sure that everybody that can vote has the chance to do so.”
The New Voter’s Project claims to be the largest grassroots youth voter mobilization in history. Nevada, Oregon, Colorado, Iowa, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Arizona, Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania are the 16 states participating in the project.
For the upcoming election, NVP has been extensively focusing on six specific states to increase the percentages of young voters: Colorado, Iowa, Oregon, Wisconsin, New Mexico and Nevada.
According to the NVP website, 2 million 18- to 24-year-olds that are eligible to vote reside in these six states. The goal for those six states was to register more than 260,000 18- to 24-year olds and make contact with 500,000 to 750,000 in the final weeks prior to election.
