The program is largely due to the efforts of Voice Your Vote, a campus group dedicated to boosting the number of registered student voters. The groups efforts registered approximately 6,500 students during the 1996 presidential campaign. While this number shines on a nationwide scale, the results dim when compared to the University's student population of 36,000. Clearly, many students were not taking advantage of their precious right to vote.
By sending the cards with leases, students will be more apt to register because of the added convenience. This eliminates any special effort a student currently would need to make in order to become a registered voter. As a collateral benefit of the program, the number of student voters registered here in Ann Arbor would also increase. Students will have their Ann Arbor addresses listed on their lease agreements, eliminating an obstacle that may prevent them from registering in the city. Since students spend the majority of the year in Ann Arbor, they would be able to play a greater role in events that directly affect them by voting in local elections.
The University's next priority should be to register current students, first concentrating on students who will be in their sophomore year next fall. The great majority of these students just missed participating in the last presidential election and subsequently missed the efforts to stir political participation. In between these quadrennial elections, the initiatives to register new voters tend to slip. Students may not feel it is important to register until the year 2000 election.
The quest to attract student voters should take inspiration from the tremendous effort put forth on campus in the fall of 1996. During that semester, the campus became inundated with volunteers seeking to increase student. Tables of volunteers were commonplace in heavily trafficked campus buildings, such as the Michigan Union and Mason Hall. MTV's Rock the Vote bus tour stopped by for a day on South State Street. As the registration deadline drew within a week, students could not walk across campus without someone presenting them with the opportunity to register. In comparison, the drive to register students last fall was smaller. Convenience is such an important factor in getting students to register that the opportunity to fill out a card during a break between classes must be available and well advertised. In this way, registration becomes a task of virtually no effort - little more than simply filling out a form.
For the democratic process to work properly, a large number of people must actively participate in elections. Students have a tendency to neglect this usually newly acquired right - hurting the populace as a whole and student interests specifically. Sending registration cards with lease agreements should encourage students to vote in larger numbers, an act that can only benefit the University and its students.