With the stress of the ending spring semester, the last thing on many students’ minds is voting in the November presidential election.
But Haley Greenwell and Abram Lyon, graduate students in the University of Memphis’s social work department, are trying to change that by helping students register to vote from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. April 15 at the University Center.
“We want everyone that is interested in voting to have the opportunity to vote,” said Greenwell. “There were a lot of people that have registered in the last 3 drives that said they were not aware of how to register. We want to make it as convenient as possible by holding one on campus.”
Despite other organizations’ voter turnouts ranking low, more than 180 students have registered to vote during the past three sessions, according to Greenwell.
Lyon, the mastermind behind the voting drive, believes the candidates’ presentations are motivating U of M students to register to vote.
“We have a table, but we catch people as they are going in to get their dinner or get their lunches,” Lyon said. “We catch people that are sitting along the edges, or people passing through, and we ask them, are they registered to vote, and give them the options to do that.”
Lyon also believes current candidates help get people to register as well.
“People who don’t want Trump in office are coming out,” Lyon said. “They want to vote against what he stands for.”
The main goal of the voting drive is to have students participate in the democratic process, so they can have a voice.
“I feel that you have to build this habit at a young age,” Lyon said. “Otherwise you get older and don’t know or don’t have say in what happened because you have not built that habits of voting at a young age. We are hoping to grab people when they are 18 and help them become engaged citizens throughout their life.”
