On Sept. 17, American University’s Bender Library ended its week-long absentee ballot assistance event, helping over 343 students register to vote.
In partnership with AU Votes, Student Government, the Office of Information Technology and the D.C. League of Women Voters, “Get your claws on your ballot” aimed to help students prepare for the midterm elections in their state. From copying students’ state IDs to notarizing documents, the campaign provided students with assistance in every step of the process.
“I want voting to feel empowering as opposed to frustrating,” Gwendolyn Reece, the director of research, teaching and learning at Bender Library, said. “I think it’s important for anyone who is a student to vote. I think that’s a really important thing to get your voice and have that be part of the decision-making.”
The event began in 2018 and reoccurs every two years for midterm and presidential elections.
“The reason in particular we want absentee ballots for students in D.C. is that, of course, we have no voting representation in Congress, and so many of our students would prefer to vote if they are [from] a place where they do have voting representation in Congress,” Reece said.
Regina Curran, the director of privacy and cyber policy in the Office of Information Technology, was tabling for the event outside of Bender Library on Wednesday Sept. 16.
“The laws are changing, and so, maybe even if you’ve done this before, maybe you’re a junior or senior and you requested an absentee ballot, a couple of years ago, you might need to update your address or the laws might be different. And so we just want to help out with that,” Curran said.
Robert Leon, a freshman in the School of Public Affairs, saw the sign for the event on his way to study and decided to get help with his absentee ballot for Delaware. Leon said that he felt nervous about voting right now.
“There’s a lot of talk about election fraud, but I feel like this is a very important election,” Leon said.
In 2020, the event added a website that Reece designed with information and links for each state’s voter registration, absentee ballot and voting processes. Even though the information provided is government information, it can be confusing depending on each state’s system, Reece said.
For example, first-time voters from Tennessee must register in-person or vote in-person — meaning if you don’t do so before you go back to school, you can’t vote at all.
“Librarians, one of the things that we do is that we help people find, navigate, and be empowered by information,” Reece said. “This entire event is nonpartisan. We’ll help anybody, it’s just about removing barriers to voting.”
This article was edited by Sophie Milner-Gorvine, Cara Halford and Gabrielle McNamee. Copy editing done by Avery Grossman and Arin Burrell. Fact-checking done by Luca Palma Poth.
