Who can vote
You must be a U.S. citizen, a resident of the state in which you’re registering, 18 years old, not in prison (laws about people with criminal records vary by state) and not declared mentally insane.
It can take between 10 days and three weeks for the local elections office to process your registration application, at which point they’ll send you a voter registration card. Remember to register as early as possible to ensure that your application is processed before Election Day. Elections offices often get inundated with paperwork as the deadline approaches.
Contact your secretary of state (www.fvap.gov/links/statelinks.html) to find out more about voting rules for your area.
Where to register
Online registration is probably the easiest and quickest way to register. Go to your state’s board of elections web site for more information about their voter registration policies. You also can find registration information at the Federal Election Commission’s web site (www.fec.gov) and the United States Election Assistance Commission’s site (www.eac.gov).
Often the department of motor vehicles, public libraries and college campuses have registration information available.
Absentee ballots
If you’re not going to be present in your voting precinct on Election Day, make sure to request an absentee ballot.
Go to your state’s elections page to download an absentee ballot or contact your county or city election official to request an absentee ballot. In some states, when you register to vote you also can request an absentee ballot.
Be sure to mail in the application to the appropriate office, and be wary of deadlines and any restrictions that apply specifically to your state.
For more information about states’ absentee voting policies go to www.fvap.gov/pubs/vag/ vagchapter3.html.
Deadlines
Many states have a 30-day registration deadline before Election Day. If you are registering to vote in Wyoming, Wisconsin, Idaho, New Hampshire, Minnesota or Maine you can register the day of the election as long as you bring an ID.
GETTING INVOLVED
There are several ways to get involved with elections. College students who want to volunteer for a partisan campaign can check out the College Republican National Committee (www.crnc.org or (888) 765–3564) or the College Democrats (www.
collegedems.com), a branch of the Democratic National Committee. Both the CRNC and the CD have many chapters on college campuses across the country that can provide more information.
Other young adults can visit Young Republicans (www.yrnf.com) or Young Democrats (www.yda.org) for more information about getting involved.
Students also can get involved in nonpartisan efforts during the election season.
Youth Voter Strategies web site (https://
youngvoterstrategies.electionmall.name/e-contentstrategy/news3.asp) has a list of other national nonpartisan groups like The State Public Interest Research Groups and Black Youth Vote.
You also can join nonpartisan groups like the Raise Your Voice Campaign to help generate youth civic engagement and disseminate information about voting in the elections. Visit www.
actionforchange.org/getconnected/state for more information about the Raise Your Voice Campaign in your state.
To volunteer as a poll worker on Election Day, visit the U.S. Election Assistance Commission at www.eac.gov or call (866) 747–1471 for your state contact information.
VOTING TIMELINE
1870: The 15th Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting any state from refusing voting rights to any man, regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
1920: The 19th Amendment ensuring women’s right to vote was ratified.
1961: The 23rd Amendment allows the votes of Washington, D.C., residents to count in the Electoral College.
1964: The 24th Amendment was ratified, disallowing the use of poll taxes. Poll taxes were used as a ploy to ensure that the poor black population could not vote even though they had been enfranchised almost 100 years earlier.
1971: The 26th Amendment lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.
TERMS TO KNOW
All the political jargon that you hear during election season is enough to make you wish you had paid more attention in your high school government class. Consider this your refresher course. Below are some terms from PBS.org that will let you walk into your voting site with confidence.
• Bicameral legislature: A legislature consisting of two separate chambers or houses. In the U.S. Congress, the lower house is the House of Representatives, and the upper house is the Senate.
• Canvassing: A tactic to win votes by contacting voters directly, usually through door-to-door, telephone or Internet campaigning.
• Caucus: Meeting of party members to decide which delegates to send to a state or national nominating convention.
• Gerrymander: To divide a voting area to give one political party a majority in as many districts as possible or weaken the voting strength of a specific population, such as an ethnic group.
• Midterm election: An election for seats in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives that occurs in the middle of a president’s four-year term.
• National party convention: The official gathering held by each of the major political parties during the summer before a presidential election to nominate the party’s presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and announce the party’s platform.
• Plurality: The number of votes in an election that the leading candidate obtains over the next highest candidate.
• Primary election: An election to select a party’s candidates for public office, held some time before the general election. In a closed primary, voters must declare a party affiliation and may vote only for candidates of their party.
• Referendum: Putting a proposed law to a direct vote of the electorate. Referendums are only used by state and local governments.
ONLINE RESOURCES
It’s a lot of work to gather the information you need about candidates and issues. These web sites are a good place to start your research.
• Project Vote Smart (www.vote-smart.org): Use this site to find out more about your district’s candidates just by entering your ZIP code. You can look through their biographies, issue positions, voting records and campaign finances.
• League of Women Voters (www.lwv.org): On this site you can register to vote, find important registration deadlines and get information about the candidates in your area.
• Congress.org (www.congress.org): Interesting features on this site include the tip sheet on how to write to your senator and the Soapbox, a forum where visitors to the site can ask their fellow constituents to contact their representative about certain issues affecting their district.
• GovTrack.us (www.govtrack.us): This site aims to make politics more personal. Say you’re interested in energy. If you sign up on govtrack.us, you’ll get e-mail updates on energy legislation that is introduced, voted on or passed. You also can get news about your representatives and updates on individual bills.
• Public Interest Research Groups (www.pirg.org): Check out how your representatives have been voting with this site’s Congressional Scorecard feature.
