Younger Voters Lead the Way with Passionate Outreach
Usually, the League of Women Voters is put into a position to encourage and inspire civic engagement and voting. This past election season, I was inspired by college and high school students who turned to our League for help so they could carry the get-ready-to-vote message to their colleagues.
The first request for support came over the summer from the City of Snohomish Youth Council, a city board that represents the interest of younger residents. The council was interested in doing a fall voter registration and preregistration drive at Snohomish and Glacier Peak high schools. They planned to organize the events and do the student-to-student talking, but they needed resources. So Nadine Shanti set them up for success with a box of tabling material designed for younger voters and let the Youth Council do the rest.
Then in October, Cathy Liu Scott and I were at a U-shaped table in the meeting room at Triton Student Center on the Edmonds College campus surrounded by young faces of the Associated Students of Edmonds College Executive Board who were eager to learn how our League could help with a three-day registration and voter-information blitz they planned for the coming week.
We scheduled time for me to return a couple of days later with a box full of voter resources, display signs, and a binder with answers to frequently asked voter questions. As I went through each item and how to arrange the information on a table, the student leaders were attentive and excited, especially about the binder. I even introduced the tally sheet we use for tabling events and asked them to fill in just the first column – the number of people they talk with at each event – if they could.
They did way more than that. After the last day of their tabling on campus, Sofia Falagan, Executive Officer for Community Relations, sent me three completed tally sheets. In total, the student leaders had talked with 79 individuals, checked 22 voter registrations, and helped 11 voters get registered, including one preregistration.
“We had a pretty successful day today!” Falagan wrote me after day one. “The binder is a really great resource. We have also gotten a lot of interest over the Washington state Supreme Court candidates interviews flyer.”
Thank you, Falagan, and all the student government leaders of Edmonds College for your amazing outreach!
