| Students work Md, Va, DC polls BY SALLY ACHARYA When voters file into the polls for today’s election, freshman Allison Doolittle will be there. So will Iraqi attorney Sarab Hassan and Egyptian judge Hesham Mourad. They won’t go to the polls to vote. Doolittle is registered in her home state, and Hassan and Mourad aren’t U.S. citizens. But they’ll be helping to assure, in modest ways, that elections are free, fair, and honestly conducted. More than 100 AU students and about a dozen international judges and lawyers studying at the Washington College of Law (WCL) will participate in two projects run by the Center for Democracy and Election Management (CDEM) on Nov. 7, the day of the contentious midterm elections. Most will be serving as poll workers and computer technicians. A group of 104 students were trained two weeks ago through a grant from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and will be stationed at polling sites around Washington, D.C. At the same time, a cohort of about a dozen Humphrey Fellows from WCL will observe the U.S. elections in the hotly contested states of Virginia and Maryland as well as in the quieter District of Columbia, where the race is focused on city seats. The international fellows have observed U.S. elections in the past, but this election is the first time that AU students will serve as poll workers and technicians. A shortfall of election help was identified as a key issue in U.S. elections by the Commission on Federal Election Reform. Cochaired by former president Jimmy Carter and former secretary of state James Baker, the commission was organized by CDEM and remains an ongoing project of the center. The average age of poll workers is 72, which means they’re often tired by the end of the 14-hour days, noted Robert Pastor, CDEM director and AU vice president of international affairs. In addition, “most people that age are not facile with electronics, and D.C. is now all on election machines,” he said. Another problem is that voter participation among young people is the lowest of any group, hovering around 22 percent. In contrast, around 80 percent of people over 65 vote. Young poll workers and technicians can help to inspire their friends to vote. The inspiration of friends was key to bringing in volunteer poll workers and technicians. Both Doolittle and graduate student Angela Witte came to one of the training sessions after friends had reported on their training. Witte is studying foreign policy at the School of International Service and has long been concerned with free elections. She had hoped to work as an election monitor in Sri Lanka, but hadn’t managed to make it happen. “It’ll just be neat to see it,” she said. “I’ve voted, of course, but I’ve never been on the other side of the ropes.” Doolittle, a freshman at the School of Communication, said that a high school teacher had impressed on young people that it was their civic duty to participate in elections. It was also another chance to get out into D.C., something that Doolittle has been doing frequently through classes and on her own since arriving at AU this fall. Plus, she quipped, “I get a cool T-shirt.” The volunteers were given bright red T-shirts with silkscreens of Uncle Sam and the slogan, “Your Country Needs You . . . to keep our elections free and fair.” The 104 students will work at polling sites in the District of Columbia. The election assistance commission is funding recruitment efforts at 19 education institutions across the country this year with money from the Help America Vote Act. But AU’s contribution has been unusually large. “No other university in Washington has done this,” Pastor said. “As far as we know, we’ve done more than any other university in the country.” |
