In a push to boost voter turnout for this year’s presidential election, the League of Women Voters announced Thursday the creation of a website to increase turnout for Massachusetts, with organization president Madhu Sridhar calling current voter participation “unacceptable.”
The site, www.votinginfo.info, is designed to educate Massachusetts voters by providing information about candidates and on how and where voters can vote, Sridhar said. She said using a website is the “most accessible way of contacting the general public.”
The website will offer “voters information about voter registration, absentee voting, procedures at the polls, where their polling place is, who the candidates are on their ballot and what their positions are that they care about,” Sridhar said. The site will also include a monthly newsletter, an election quiz and instructions on the voting process.
Sridhar said the commonwealth has room for improvement, noting that “eleven states had a better turnout for voting than Massachusetts.”
Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin agreed with Sridhar that groups “need to reach out to all communities, especially minorities and youth, and get their full participation, and by achieving that we will be successful.” Galvin added that the best way for people to improve government is by voting.
“People are frustrated with the government and with certain policies,” Galvin said. “But what they don’t understand is they have the power to change it by voting.”
“Voting is a right, not a privilege,” said Leonard Alkins, president of the Boston branch of the NAACP. “No one should have the right to vote taken away except through death,” he said.
Alkins added that voting should not be denied to the homeless or ex-convicts.
Sridhar said the website will be easily accessible to “all citizens who want to make important public policy decisions.”
The League of Women Voters hopes to use the site to register minorities and young people, because only one in three eligible voters in Massachusetts between 18 and 24 years old voted in the last election, Sridhar said. Among Hispanics and Asians, only one in five voted.
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