Last spring, Hamilton students, faculty members, and administrators formed a nonpartisan campus organization with the goal of helping students navigate the political process and increasing political engagement on the Hill. In addition to its main committee, HamVotes has an ambassador group made up of students who hope to assist their peers with voter registration and civic education, with the goal of increasing voter turnout and ballot access for the 2018 midterm elections and beyond.
The group once consisted primarily of Hamilton faculty and advisors but has recently increased its inclusivity by allowing students to participate and help their classmates vote in confidence. Nicole Taylor ’19, chair to the HamVotes ambassador team, joined the main committee, consisting of Phyllis Breland, Kaity Stewart, Lisa Magnarelli, Tessa Chefalo, and Phil Klinkner, last spring after demonstrating her passion about campus voter registration through her work at the nonpartisan, nonprofit Campus Vote Project. The main committee worked on recruiting the student ambassador team, eventually selecting a diverse group of twelve individuals who are passionate about civic engagement. Now, they are open for general membership and in search of committed student members. Using TurboVote, a company that notifies registered voters when an election is coming up and provides them with information about candidates (as well as official state registration forms), the student ambassadors hope to simplify the voting process by assisting students in properly filling out their voter registration form and requesting absentee ballots. TurboVote is a helpful tool for HamVotes, since 70 percent of Hamilton’s student body resides out-of-state when not on campus, which means absentee ballots are in high demand. Both TurboVote and HamVotes are nonpartisan organizations; the student ambassadors’ main goal is to provide students with the tools they need to make an informed decision.
Taylor says the inspiration for becoming involved in promoting civic engagement stems from discussing politics with her classmates in the fall of 2015 while the primaries were taking place ahead of the 2016 presidential election. She describes being surprised to find out that many of them had never been registered to vote. She began registering them and helping them to “fill out their forms and mailing it in with them.” That was when she realized that there was need for this effort on Hamilton’s campus derived from a misconception that “because we are Hamilton students, we are super informed and know how to do everything.” In using TurboVote and facilitating easy access to helpful voting resources, HamVotes’ student ambassadors hope to make the voting process seem less daunting and more easily navigable.
Each member of the student team participates in outreach to individual campus organizations, and this semester they are also disseminating information at all-campus events. Additionally, Resident Advisors have partnered with HamVotes representatives to help students with their voting plan by hosting events in residential buildings. Larger events for the future include a travelling voter registration drive on National Voter Registration Day on Sept. 25, which occurs before every state’s registration deadline, as well as a table at the upcoming comedy show featuring Mike Birbiglia. Their website which provides links for easy TurboVote access is
http://students.hamilton.edu/hamvotes/home.
Taylor reminds the students that, “Your vote is your voice”, and that the HamVotes ambassadors can be reached at [email protected].
