The Bonner Network partners with several organizations who are working to get out the vote, youth and otherwise, on election day.  According to our Alumni Survey, voting rates among Bonner alumni are notably higher than for their peers in the same age groups.  Below are a few key resources:

• Part-time Opportunity - Be a Campus Vote Fellow
• New smart phone app with BUILT-IN CHECKLIST FOR VOTER REGISTRATION
• Get-out-the-vote training module
• Other resources from the Campus Engagement Election Project 

Part-time Opportunity - Be a Campus Vote Fellow

Download the flier:  CVPFellowFlierFinal.pdf

The Fair Elections Legal Network is looking for Bonners in several key states where new laws may present barriers for underrepresented groups.  The Fair Elections Legal Network is a national, nonpartisan advocacy organization whose mission is to remove barriers to registration and voting for traditionally underrepresented constituencies and improve overall election administration through administrative, legal, and legislative reform as well as provide legal and technical assistance to voter mobilization organizations. This dynamic organization is looking for energetic young leaders who are ready to make a difference on their college campus this election year.  We are looking for at least one Bonner or non-Bonner student who is driven, passionate, can work autonomously, and will be able to spend 4-6 hours per week on this project until the election. 

Unfortunately, this opportunity is not permissable for AmeriCorps hours.  Hence, we invite you to involve students who are not enrolled in AmeriCorps at this time. Still, we are hoping to identify at least one student to be involved in this initiative.

Campus Vote Fellow will be coached by FELN and be responsible for organizing, planning, networking and empowering others in their campus community. The goal will be to use the tool-kit as a menu of ideas where students that look at what's been done before and choose a plan of action based on the needs of their school. Some examples of potential deliverables would be:

• Organize a student voting coalition to run registration drives
• Sign up the school to a Nation Voter Registration Day site
• Integrate voting information into the school's website
• Ask administrators to sign up for Turbo Vote's free and personalized voter registration widget. 

Download the flier above, then get in touch with Nefisah Sallim and Josh Blair (nsallim@bonner.org, josh@bonner.org). We will connect him or her with this great leadership opportunity with FELN.  We are looking forward to hearing from you soon.  DON'T MISS OUT ON THIS SPECIAL AND VALUABLE OPPORTUNITY!   Please have your students reach out to us by next Friday, September 21, 2012.

New smart phone app with BUILT-IN CHECKLIST FOR VOTER REGISTRATION

With more and more students using Smartphones, there's a powerful new app that can let them use their Smartphones to navigate through the voting  process. Key partners ofCampus Election Engagement Project, like Rock the Vote and the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights, have been working on it for close to two years. It's downloadable for free for both iPhones and Androids. It's a great tool to help students surmount the electoral barriers using the technologies they most rely on, and I'd say one of our most useful tools in companion with our Six Key Ways  checklist.  So we hope you'll promote it to all the schools that you work with and ask them to get their IT departments to distribute it to all of their students, faculty, and staff.  Please do whatever you can to make this happen. We've attached a full description.

The app allows students to:

• Verify their registration and register to vote; 
• Look up their polling place; 
• Review key voting rules and regulations for their state; 
• See what type of machine they will vote on; 
• Receive notifications of late breaking news affecting voting in their area

They can also use it to help register their friends, a critical way to multiply its impact. The Election Protection Smartphone App will provide all the information voters need in the palm of their hand, and we think it's a very powerful tool. But we have to get it into their hands for it to have an impact, so we hope you'll roll it out to them.

We've attached a more comprehensive description, including how to get a customized URL so they can follow up with students who register and send them reminders on key dates of events.

We've attached a full description plus some sample emails, and Facebook and Twitter templates that schools can post and send out. Since campus IT departments will play a key role in distribution, you might want to also make sure they've secured the related Rock The Vote online registration tool and are posting it on key campus websites.

Thanks, from Paul Loeb for the Campus Election Engagement Project

Want to organize a get-out-the-vote drive?  

Here's a training on how to do so!

Get-Out-the-Vote (with a youth focus)

  In 2000, voting among American 17- to 24- year olds reached its low at around 36 percent, falling more than 13 percent since the voting age was lowered to eighteen in 1971. Despite millions of dollars in investment and the hard work of individuals and groups across the nation, voting by youth (with the exception of college students) in the 2004 election did not increase notably. Voting among those older than 25 isn't at 100% either, with 80% of those eligible claiming to have voted in the 2000 Presidential election but with turnout likely much lower. This module provides strategies for running a Get Out the Vote campaign on your campus or in your community. In particular, it is designed to help increase political engagement of young people. It uses a variety of fun, interactive activities to get participants thinking and equipped to carry out voting campaigns.

Other Tips and Tools from the Campus Engagement Election Project

CAMPUS ELECTION ENGAGEMENT PROJECT OVERVIEW

How do we get America’s 20 million college students involved in the 2012 elections? In 2008 their voting and volunteering played a key role in race after race, at every electoral level. It also mattered profoundly in 2006. But in 2010, nearly three quarters of students stayed home. When I traveled to states with down-to-the-wire races, like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Florida, the campuses were disturbingly quiet, as if the electoral contests were taking place on a distant planet. Over three million fewer traditional-age students voted than just two years before. Including older students brings the likely drop-off to four million. In Wisconsin and Florida, for instance, less than 19% of the students voted in 2010, and less than 22% in Ohio. Four out of five stayed home. This drop off had a huge impact on who was elected, and while faculty and administrators lamented student disengagement, they did little to systematically reverse it. New voter suppression laws have now made it still harder for students to register and vote in the most contested states in the country. So there’s a serious risk that student electoral involvement will continue to decline, affecting both November’s election and (because youth voting and political participation patterns tend to stick) their generation’s continued participation for the rest of their lives. 

Check out these tools:  10 Things Schools Can Do This Spring to Engage Students in the Elections