The Tufts Community Union Senate passed a resolution at its Feb. 2 meeting, urging the university to implement a streamlined voter registration process for its students. The proposed registration process would greatly improve students ability to participate in elections and alleviate the chaotic voter registration process on campus.
The senate resolution proposes utilizing TurboVote, a non-profit organization, to streamline the registration process. Students would be prompted to register to vote at a bottleneck time, when every student must go through the same process, like registering for classes on iSIS or completing matriculation forms through the universitys Connections website.
TurboVote would compile a students registration information and, in partnership with Tufts Votes, mail the student a pre-paid pre-addressed envelope. To complete the registration process, students would sign the registration documents mailed to them and place the pre-addressed envelope back in the mail.
Implementing a streamlined voter registration process is directly in line with the universitys goal of encouraging active citizenship amongst its students. In light of the large number of Tufts students who were discouraged from voting in 2012 by Medford poll workers who found inconsistencies with their registration forms, pre-registering students en masse either during class registration or during matriculation is a good idea.
The Tufts Democrats and Tufts Votes provide the major existing mechanisms for Tufts students to register to vote, generally through get-out-the-vote campaigns and registration drives that involve approaching students as they enter dining halls or the Mayer Campus Center. Streamlining a process that largely involves convincing people to stop at a table for 5-10 minutes will go a long way toward ensuring that every eligible Tufts student who wants to vote is able to do so.
The resolution also calls for a reorganization of Tufts Votes to ensure its nonpartisanship and better equip it to deal with the large number of forms that it would presumably have to handle after TurboVotes implementation.
The concept of creating an online system to streamline Tufts students voter registration process is a certainly a positive one. However, given the wave of problems iSIS has faced since its inception, a proper implementation of TurboVote is incredibly important in encouraging Tufts students to utilize the program and thus ensure its success. Should including voter registration in iSIS prove too complex or faulty, the matriculation process is another ideal time when the university can efficiently reach a large number of students.
In order to help Tufts students be active citizens, the university should heed the Senate resolution and work to implement an online, streamlined registration process that gives every Tufts student an easy opportunity to register to vote.
