Voter registration season has begun in the Pit

Election season is here, and with it comes voter registration advocacy groups.

This means students walking through the Pit are asked to register to vote by their peers, armed with clipboards and stickers.

Taylor Moss is the campus organizer of the UNC division of the N.C. Public Interest Research Group, a statewide organization that advocates voter registration alongside other campaigns such as renewable energy, public health and reducing the cost of textbooks. 

“Voter registration is important largely because voting is important, obviously,” Moss said.

While registering voters is important, Moss said it is only the first step.

“We’re going to stop putting our efforts in voter registration once early voting starts,” she said. 

“Once that happens, that’s when we’ll start to get out the vote work, which is sending emails, making phone calls, sending texts and doing visibility stuff.”

Moss said the group has been successful in encouraging young people to vote in the past.

This year, UNC’s Public Interest Research Group has been working closely with Tar Heel Vote, a project of the State and External Affairs Task Force of student government, also advocating for voter registration. 

“(Voter registration) is the most important way for people to be actively engaged in the community, whether it be at the local, state or national level,” said senior Amber Cassady, who leads the project. 

While voter registration advocacy groups have been a cause of frustration and social anxiety for students in the past, Cassady said Tar Heel Vote has been trying new methods of getting students to register.

“Usually people were walking around, but this year we have a table so people can approach us,” she said.

Tar Heel Vote began registering students Monday and registered 165 students by Wednesday evening, Diana Dayal, student government director of state and external affairs, said in an email.

Jeremy Frye, a junior Chinese major, registered to vote this year, but he feels less enthusiastic about the political process. 

“The first time around, I was really apathetic about voting, just because I feel like politics have never influenced my life,” he said.

Frye said he changed his mind when he understood the fight black people went through to vote in the past.

“I guess I wanted to use that right as more of an honorific kind of thing,” he said.

But sophomore Spanish major June Zhu is more concerned with the convenience and comfort of registration. 

“I didn’t register last year just because it was inconvenient,” she said.

Zhu said she decided to register this year because she has been reading a lot about how young people are underrepresented in government and wanted to make sure her voice was heard.

“I figured it’s kind of like a civic duty I should be fulfilling,” she said.

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