{"id":2087,"date":"2019-11-20T21:34:31","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T21:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/?p=2087"},"modified":"2019-11-25T17:22:42","modified_gmt":"2019-11-25T17:22:42","slug":"nypirgs-mission-to-increase-youth-voter-turnout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/2019\/11\/nypirgs-mission-to-increase-youth-voter-turnout\/","title":{"rendered":"NYPIRG’s Mission To Increase Youth Voter Turnout"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hunter students Anna Compton, Rahima Khatun and Joann Villacres volunteered with NYPIRG to help other students register to vote.<\/figcaption> Photo by Grace Yeeun Song<\/span><\/figure>\n

Every election season, a group of students stand outside the cafeteria, screaming \u201cVote on Election Day! Your voice matters.\u201d These students are members of <\/span>New York Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit that educates young people about voting rights and city policies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On election day earlier this month Hunter students Anna Compton, Rahima Khatun and Joann Villacres volunteered with NYPIRG to help other students register to vote and find their nearest polling place. The election was for the city\u2019s Public Advocate, District attorneys and policies affecting the city charter.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When it comes to local elections, New York City has had one of the lowest youth voter turnout among all the major cities in the U.S., according to NYPIRG. In the 2017 mayoral election, for instance, only 13.5% of young voters (ages 18-24) turned out, according to NYC Campaign Financial Board.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Young people tend to vote less because of their unpredictable daily schedules, according to <\/span>Professor Jessica Hardie, a sociology professor at Hunter College. Research done by NYPIRG showed that voting turnout increases overall when voting is easier, which includes having time to vote, being close to a polling location, and having a well-staffed and not overburdened polling location.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>Young people are often juggling multiple time demands, including school, work and family responsibilities, and this can make getting to the polls more difficult,\u201d said Hardie. \u201cAnother reason young people may not vote is that they may not like the candidates or see the issues as relevant to their lives.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jason Chen, a 22-year-old student at Hunter studying computer science, is one of the students who didn\u2019t go out to vote for the November\u2019s general election because of these reasons. \u201cTo be honest, I didn\u2019t even know it was election day. Even if I did, I wouldn\u2019t have voted because I had class all day,\u201d said Chen. \u201cAlso, I think the biggest problem is that most students aren\u2019t really well-informed about what the vote is for or they just don\u2019t care.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Compton, one of the NYPIRG interns who is a sophomore at Hunter, says this makes the work that NYPIRG interns do on CUNY campuses even more important. \u201cWhenever there is an upcoming election, the other interns and I would visit classrooms and set up a desk outside the cafeteria to raise awareness about new policies and inform students about how these new policies can affect their lives,\u201d said Compton.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Whenever there’s an upcoming election, the NYPIRG interns set up a desk outside the cafeteria to raise awareness about new policies.<\/figcaption> Photo by Grace Yeeun Song<\/span><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s not unusual, however, for NYPIRG interns to be met met with either indifference or rejection by other students. Rahima Khatun, a freshman at Hunter, said that it is <\/span>sad for her to see how some students can be so apathetic to local elections. \u201cLocal issues are as important, if not more, as national ones, because they\u2019re the ones that impact students like us directly. People can complain about the MTA and Medicaid all they want but if they don\u2019t go out to vote, nothing will change,\u201d said Khatun.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the challenges that NYPIRG interns face, they have helped more than 1,000 students register to vote since the beginning of the semester. \u201cBy removing any possible barrier that prevents young voters from voting, we\u2019re hoping that youth voter turnout in our city and in our nation overall increases,\u201d said Compton.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Youth voter turnout is at one of its lowest points in our city, and NYPIRG interns are here to change that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":2089,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[61,15,13,81,209,210],"class_list":["post-2087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-college","tag-cuny","tag-hunter","tag-nypirg","tag-voting","tag-youth-voters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2087"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2152,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087\/revisions\/2152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}