UC Campuses Tops in Student Voter Registration
UC Student Association
Recently
UC campuses joined the Ultimate College Bowl, a national contest that
will award scholarships and a free concert with Death Cab for Cutie to
the students and school that register the most students to vote. As of
October 14, when we went to press, five UC Campuses, UCSB, UCB, UCLA,
UCSD and UCSC were in the top ten for number of registrations by a
campus: UC Santa Barbara and UC Berkeley are in the top two spots
nationally. Also three UC campuses, UCSB, UCB, and UCSC are in the top
ten for the percentage of students registered on their campuses. See
the latest scoreboard at www.ultimatecollegebowl.com/.
UC
student voter registration success is largely due to the UC Students
Vote! Project. It is the largest nonpartisan youth voter engagement
mobilization in the state. The students involved in student government
build nonpartisan vote coalitions with other campus organizations to
register new voters on campus. The project is totally peer-to-peer, run
by student volunteers, and supported by University of California
Student Association (UCSA) and the United States Student Association
Foundation (USSAF).
Students involved in the
UC Students Vote! Project have already registered more than 14,000
students to vote statewide. They are holding the official UC Students
Voter Registration Week October 13-20, 2008, the last full week to
register to vote before the State voter registration deadline on
October 20. The week is endorsed by UC System President Yudof.
The
Ultimate College Bowl Competition was launched in September as a
partnership between MySpace and America’s largest non-partisan voter
registration groups – Declare Yourself, HeadCount, Student PIRGs, Rock
the Vote, and the United States Student Association – as conceived by
Why Tuesday?, a leading voter education organization. Incentives
include scholarships to students who get the most friends to register
to vote, provided by Guitar Hero; and concerts for the school whose
students register the most by number and by percentage of student body,
funded by PhoneTag.com.
