The Associated Students of UNM’s Office of Governmental Affairs is partnering with the Bernalillo County Clerk’s Office to bring non-partisan voter registration agent training sessions to the University, as election day draws ever nearer.
Nathan Cowan, ASUNM’s Governmental Affairs director, said the initiative is one of three top priorities for the ASUNM office.
The County Clerk's Office initially reached out to ASUNM and asked if they could speak to them since one of the ongoing focuses of the County Clerk’s Office is finding new voters and informing them of the process, Cowan said.
Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver said her staff member Brad Malone felt it would be really effective to reach out to UNM, and both Toulouse Oliver and Cowan said they felt the collaboration worked for both parties.
UNM has one of the largest populations of new voters, and the partnership worked out well due to both the County Clerk's Office and UNM having similar priorities in wanting to reach a large number of new voters at UNM.
“It was the perfect collaboration,” Cowan said.
The first event hosted through the partnership was held last week.
The event helped teach students not only how to register to vote, but also how to become a voter registration agent, Toulouse Oliver said. The process is fairly straightforward for students, with her office to help students through each process, she said.
The training takes about an hour. Students come in with full contact information and County Clerk’s Office staff will conduct the training, she said. They will also be going over the unique rules and the laws associated with voter registration in New Mexico.
Toulouse Oliver said her staff will demonstrate what information agents will need to collect from new voters, what the agent will do with completed forms and how to deal with any questions that may arise as they are being registered.
Cowan said they had about a dozen participants, which is more than they have had in similar past events.
“I think it went great. We had two sessions and a variety of students come — some freshmen, some traditional and some non-traditional,” Cowan said. “We had a really good diversity of students show up.”
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Toulouse Oliver said the County Clerk's Office also felt encouraged by the event.
“We have started to hear some rumors that other student organizations on campus would be interested in hosting additional training,” she said. “So all in all we are feeling very positive about the partnership.”
Toulouse Oliver said she feels that the student population is often under-represented, and that the County Clerk's Office sees it is as part of its job to reach out to the community and make it easy for new voters to register.
She said her office has also provided an early voting location on campus since 2008, a practice that will continue this year.
Cowan said he is optimistic about voter turnout this election year.
“New Mexico’s primary election was the highest voter turnout since 1996 in this state. That’s impressive, percentage-wise,” he said.
The success of the initial event will only lead to more events with the County Clerk’s office, he said, with the next slated for Sept. 22, and ASUNM hopes to continue the collaboration into the future.
“The most exciting thing right now is that the 2016 election is the first time the millennial generation will all be of age to vote. So that makes the millennial generation 31 percent of the electorate, which is the same percentage that the Baby Boomer generation influences right now,” Cowan said. “Politicians and those running for office are actually specializing their campaigns typically to millennials right now.”
Toulouse Oliver said that she too was hopeful for a large turnout from younger voters.
“Traditionally (younger voters) are a chunk of the population that doesn’t participate at such a high level. But we did see an uptick in that in the primary election here in New Mexico, and I would love to see a great robust participation level from that group,” she said.
Cowan said he believes attending the sessions ASUNM will be hosting also provides students different perspectives on the election, since registration agents are required to be non-partisan.
“From the top down, it's a process of engaging voters who haven’t voted before or don’t see the need to vote,” Cowan said.
Cowan said he believes the County Clerk's Office has done really well in encouraging young people to vote, by having three to four events a day that work hard to reach potential voters.
UNM President Bob Frank praised ASUNM and the partnership, and said he hopes it will get more students engaged in the political process.
“For the County Clerk to take that type of initiative is great,” Frank said. “Obviously we want students to engage in the dialogue that happens in UNM and the county, and sometimes students are not as aware of those changes as they should be. But there is a powerful constituency here, and the more they engage, the more they participate, the better.”
Jenaya Salazar, a sophomore nursing major, said she also supports UNM and the County Clerk's Office working hard to educate students on these processes.
“In high school we don’t really get taught much on in-depth politics. I think it's really great UNM is taking steps to talk to students about voting,” Salazar said.
Cowan encourages students to vote, adding that it's just another part of growing up.
“I think registering to vote and voting as an informed voter is just another step toward independence and growing individually,” he said. “It’s scary at first, but then you do it and you realize it’s really easy.”
