Blue Eyes Designs

So I had a good idea tonight, and like many a good idea, it could potentially
mean a lot of work (but a good reward in the end!) I’ve been doing a lot of
thinking about American politics lately, and more than anything else, it really
bothers me how many people don’t vote. Only about 30% of Americans vote and even
few youger people do. It takes maybe an hour of your year and can make SUCH a
difference. ANYWAY it kinda came to a head tonight as I was sitting at the Knox
for Dean meeting. It seem to me that a lot of people, teens especially, don’t
vote because the don’t know how to get registered and how to vote by absentee
ballot (in the case of college students away from home etc.) It also seems that
a lot of people don’t vote because they don’t know for whom they want to vote.
So it seems that the logical thing to do is hold some information sessions. I
suggested the idea of having an evening with someone from the county on hand to
register voters here, an information session about how to vote by absentee
ballots (before the registration in case they can’t absentee it in their state)
and then hold a forum to inform people about the canidates.

The last bit is by far the trickiest, but I would think, the most important. I
finally landed on the idea of having the different political organizations on
campus present their canidate of choice. The format would have to be something
like “5-10 minutes” and “no talking about other canidates” to encourage
straight-foward policy discussion, and try to discourage opponent-bashing.

To do this is obviously going to take a lot of planning, and I’d like it to
happen before the primaries in March. This means that it will have to happen end
of Janurary/beginning of September. A few people vollunteered to help this
evening, which is GREAT. What I’m doing right now is looking into voter
registration programmes like “Rock the Vote” etc to see what other people are
doing. We’ll need to talk to the other political organizations on campus to
enlist their help, get the information gathered about getting absentees
registered and contact the county about getting voters locally registered. I
would also like to talk to student life and maybe union board to get thier
backing. A pipe dream would be to open this up to the local community at large
and get the citizens voting too. I mean, in the end, I don’t care who you vote
for, as long as you vote.

If any of you guys have any brillant ideas or want to help out in any way,
please tell me. I fear that rep term is going to eat me, so we’re going to need
all the help we can get.