Classroom Publication

Issue date: 11/10/08 Section: Voters

Media Credit: Anna Lempereur Staff members of NYPIRG were happy to help students solve their voting problems during the election.

Saying that the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) encouraged students to vote in the 2008 Presidential Election is an understatement. They actually went into classes and registered over 2,400 students to vote, which is more than any other school in the state!

"We got everybody pumped up for the election!" said Nicci Phister, 23, a Project Coordinator of NYPIRG.

NYPIRG is a non-partisan, student based organization that works for students' rights on issues such as higher education, environmental conservation, and of course, voting rights. Staff members of the organization made sure to inform students of their rights as well as create awareness of the importance of this year's election.

"We did not just register people to vote, but we empowered them," said Josie Zolkind, 23, also a Project Coordinator. "We wanted to make them feel like they had a voice."

But when Election Day came around, there was one little problem - tons of students were completely turned away from the polls after standing in line for over an hour, being denied the right to vote.

According to a press release, students were being denied because many of them who registered to vote did not find their names on the polling rolls, and poll workers were turning them away rather than offering them paper Affidavit Ballots as the law requires.

"Poll workers at Colonial Quad were violating the constitution by not handing out Affidavit Ballots," said Zolkind. "They blatantly said, 'We're not giving them out.' I was really, really infuriated."

Over 500 phone calls were made to NYPIRG's voters hotline from students who were extremely confused and had major problems with trying to make their votes count. Project Coordinators and volunteers were assisting students from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. A number of students never received their cards in the mail, which caused a great deal of confusion of where they were assigned to vote. They had to actually go downtown to the County Board of Elections Headquarters and speak to a judge, just to find out where their polling locations were. It took some of them a couple hours to find out where they were supposed to vote.

Continued...

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