Boston University is working to promote voter registration and turnout for the Nov. 6 midterm election, partially through a partnership with voter registration tool TurboVote.
Massachusetts’ voter registration deadline was Wednesday, and many other states’ deadlines have either passed or are approaching in the last weeks of October.
TurboVote is an official tool made by Democracy Works, a nonpartisan nonprofit that aims to improve the voting experience, according to the organization’s website. TurboVote itself provides a straightforward way of checking registration status and vote-by-mail rules, according to the Democracy Works website.
TurboVote had been wanting to work with BU again after an earlier collaboration, Katherine Cornetta, assistant to the dean of students said. After seeing the results of a Tufts University study on voter engagement across university campuses, BU decided to partner up with TurboVote again.
According to the study, BU’s 2016 voter registration rate was 78.2 percent, compared to a national average of 70.6 percent.
“Although our numbers are great compared to our competitor schools, Dean [Kenneth] Elmore really wanted to see how much more we could do,” Cornetta said.
Cornetta said that TurboVote’s platform is “10 times better than it was almost 10 years ago.”
“They had made a lot of growth, and that really impressed us,” Cornetta said, “and we were excited to work with them.”
Democracy Works Director of Communications Brandon Naylor said that different dates and deadlines for various states can be hard to follow, so TurboVote not only gives students a way to check registration status and apply for mail-in ballots, but also provides a notification system to increase voter engagement.
“We send you a notice that says, ‘Hey, you’ve got an election coming up, this is your polling place,’” Naylor said, “which is helpful for a lot of people.”
TurboVote Senior Partnerships Associate Sara Clark said each BU student who registers with TurboVote will receive a reminder the day before the election with their polling location address and hours, identification requirements and ballot information from Google Civic Information’s application programming interface.
“It not only gives them that reminder, but it empowers them to go to the polling location the next day with that message right at the top of their text or their email and feel like they have all the information they need to cast their ballot,” Clark said.
Anthony Buonopane, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, said he thinks online tools like TurboVote and Voter.org can be extremely helpful for students navigating the complicated voting process.
“I know that, with Massachusetts anyways, with the Secretary of State’s website, it’s very complex and very confusing for a lot of people,” Buonopane said.
Naylor said that this year, TurboVote wants people to vote in a more deliberate way.
“We want people to make a plan to vote,” Naylor said. “We want you to get together with five of your friends, determine where your polling place is, make sure that you all have a ride there and that you all asked for time off work, that you all know when you’re going to go vote.”
According to data provided to The Daily Free Press by the Dean of Students office, 541 students have used TurboVote. Only 38 students registered with TurboVote at first, Cornetta said, but those numbers “started to grow exponentially” as more students learned about it.
“I’m really excited about what the future of this platform and BU could be, and I’m eager to see how, even past the midterm elections, we can grow it,” Cornetta said.
The partnership with TurboVote isn’t the only way that BU is trying to get students to register. Many student groups, such as BU College Democrats, hold their own events to increase registration among their peers.
BU College Democrats has been holding voter registration drives in the George Sherman Union almost weekly, said Benjamin Levy, the group’s secretary. They’ve had “plenty of people” sign up in recent weeks, he said.
The BU College Democrats do not use TurboVote, Levy said, as they prefer to take voter registration into their own care.
“We have our own method of getting people to register,” Levy said, “which we find to be more successful since it’s more of the student’s perspective, and they have more of a relationship with that.”
Kiara Perez, a sophomore in the College of Communication, said many of her peers discuss voting, especially the merits of voting in Massachusetts versus voting in their home states.
“Everyone’s always frantic about ‘Should I register here? Should I register at home? Is it worth it to do an absentee ballot?,’” Perez said.
Some students think an online voting system would be beneficial, such as College of Fine Arts senior Ryan Huemmer, who is from North Carolina.
“I have to go buy stamps and stuff, and I’m motivated enough to do that,” Huemmer said. “Especially coming from a swing state, I know it’s important. But for people who are in New England, it’s kind of like, ‘Well, whatever, we’ll slide by, it doesn’t matter if I vote.’”
Huemmer said he feels that the perspective on voting differs within the whole BU ecosystem, but staying active in voting is important. His assistant director in the School of Theatre continually reminds students to vote at class meetings, Huemmer said.
“It’s definitely a constant reminder to be active with not only the work we create, but using the voices when we’re actually given, politically, the opportunity to do so,” Huemmer said.
