Ohio University students mobilize to educate and register voters

Ohio University students are mobilizing to help sign up and educate voters in advance of the November general elections as part of OHIO’s ongoing civic engagement efforts.

Representatives of the Center for Campus and Community Engagement will register and inform voters outside Baker University Center and at the College Gate from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. for National Voter Registration Day on Tuesday, Sept. 20.

Students and other campus community members interested in volunteering with National Voter Registration Day can register via GivePulse before Wednesday, Sept. 14. There will be a volunteer training, held via Teams at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 15.

Ben Kudus Yussif, the civic engagement graduate assistant in the Center for Campus and Community Engagement, has pulled together an inclusive coalition of politically-oriented student organizations to serve as a non-partisan civic engagement student advisory group to coordinate voter outreach and civic engagement events at Ohio University through peer-to-peer engagement, with additional support from the Athens County League of Women Voters.

Similar efforts on National Voter Registration Day 2021 resulted in the registration of more than 120 new voters. Yussif hopes to exceed that number this year. He urges students to volunteer for Voter Registration Day, to get informed, and to vote.

“Our votes matter a lot,” Yussif said. “Everything we do now is about our future. We are the future. When we get to participate actively in voting it helps politicians to listen to us. Whatever decisions politicians and leaders make today affect us tomorrow.”  

Ohio University was one of over 200 U.S. campuses designated as a Voter Friendly Campus by national nonpartisan organizations Fair Elections Center’s Campus Vote Project and NASPA—Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.

The Center for Campus and Community Engagement will host a civic engagement forum on Thursday, Oct. 27, from noon to 3 p.m. Students can register via GivePulse. At the Forum students will have the opportunity to engage directly with elected public officials in non-partisan ways, and to discuss some of the key issues that matter to them.

More information about how and where to vote in the upcoming elections can be found on OHIO’s Civic Engagement website.