UDC, Howard host early voting drives
Jennifer Kouakeu, Phillip Lucas/Contributing Writers
Issue date: 9/28/08 Section: Cover
"If you think that your vote doesn't count, turn out to vote and see what happens," the coordinator said. "If everybody showed up and voted, we'd have a very different landscape than we do have in the city."
With the youth vote serving as an integral part of the upcoming general election, Howard University hosted a voter registration and absentee ballot casting drive Sep. 18 and 19, most students looking to help elect the nation's first Black president.
"We just wanted to get people, the Howard community and the D.C. community in general, registered to vote," said Anika Forrest, a sophomore sociology major and event volunteer.
A little more than a minute was, in fact, all it took for freshman biology major Gabbi Norman from Orlando, Fla. to cast her vote.
Florida, a swing state, has been among the hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis and recent Wall Street meltdown earlier this week has many feeling that recent economic shakeups are what could win Obama the election.
A Sept. 18 Gallup Poll shows Obama (D-Ill.) leading Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), by four points as consumers grow increasingly negative. Adding to his momentum, Obama released a "Plan For Change" ad earlier this week where he speaks plainly about the economic crisis and what he plans to do to address it, which includes a $1,000 tax break for the struggling middle class.
As seats at the registration drive filled with young voters, who all happened to be female, Norman answered the question of whether Gov. Sarah Palin's inclusion on the Republican ticket could sway the female vote with a resounding "no."
"I really only think he picked her so he'd have the sympathy of the women voters," Norman said, referring to Sen. Hillary Clinton's losing the Democratic nomination. " … I think it was a bad decision on his part." Touchey encourages youth to become politically involved on all levels.
"Voting is just the first step," he explains. "You should be getting active locally in what's going on in your community so that you can shape who's going to be running. You need to be active in the political party, be aware of the issues and write letters to the editor when something's going wrong in the newspaper and you want to see it corrected. Voting is where we think we should stop. We think it's the ceiling, when actually, it's the floor."
With the youth vote serving as an integral part of the upcoming general election, Howard University hosted a voter registration and absentee ballot casting drive Sep. 18 and 19, most students looking to help elect the nation's first Black president.
"We just wanted to get people, the Howard community and the D.C. community in general, registered to vote," said Anika Forrest, a sophomore sociology major and event volunteer.
A little more than a minute was, in fact, all it took for freshman biology major Gabbi Norman from Orlando, Fla. to cast her vote.
Florida, a swing state, has been among the hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis and recent Wall Street meltdown earlier this week has many feeling that recent economic shakeups are what could win Obama the election.
A Sept. 18 Gallup Poll shows Obama (D-Ill.) leading Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), by four points as consumers grow increasingly negative. Adding to his momentum, Obama released a "Plan For Change" ad earlier this week where he speaks plainly about the economic crisis and what he plans to do to address it, which includes a $1,000 tax break for the struggling middle class.
As seats at the registration drive filled with young voters, who all happened to be female, Norman answered the question of whether Gov. Sarah Palin's inclusion on the Republican ticket could sway the female vote with a resounding "no."
"I really only think he picked her so he'd have the sympathy of the women voters," Norman said, referring to Sen. Hillary Clinton's losing the Democratic nomination. " … I think it was a bad decision on his part." Touchey encourages youth to become politically involved on all levels.
"Voting is just the first step," he explains. "You should be getting active locally in what's going on in your community so that you can shape who's going to be running. You need to be active in the political party, be aware of the issues and write letters to the editor when something's going wrong in the newspaper and you want to see it corrected. Voting is where we think we should stop. We think it's the ceiling, when actually, it's the floor."
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