How Many Voters Have Been Registered Through March For Our Lives
6 months before the 2018 Congressional midterm elections—and days earlier high school graduations nationwide—March For Our Lives and HeadCount are joining forces to phase a solar day of activity Tuesday (May 29) to fight gun violence past registering thousands of high schoolhouse students to vote.
"High schools represent the time to come of America," said March for Our Lives student activist David Hogg, who turned 18 this bound, in a statement. "Let'due south make it a future where anybody has the chance to register and vote." He added: "People accept died for your correct to vote, but y'all can't vote if you're non registered."
HeadCount, a not-partisan, voter-registration arrangement with deep ties to the music manufacture, reports that, as of May 24, representatives from 1,050 different schools from 46 states, Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico accept signed up at HeadCount.org /SignUp to participate in the twenty-four hours of action. Some have already run voter registration drives in their schools and many more than will exercise then on Tuesday, when classes resume later Memorial Day weekend.
On February. 17, just three days subsequently Hogg and his classmates witnessed the mass murder of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Loftier School in Parkland, Fla., high school senior Emma Gonzalez fabricated an impassioned spoken language linking the fight against gun violence with voter activism.
"Politicians who sit in their golden House and Senate seats, funded by the NRA, telling us nothing could have been done to forestall this — we phone call BS!," she alleged. "They say tougher guns laws do not decrease gun violence — we telephone call BS!" And she closed her speech with her three most powerful words: If you hold, she said, "register to vote!"
March For Our Lives, created in the wake of the Parkland, Fla. shootings, mounted the march confronting gun violence in Washington, D.C. March 24, which drew more than than 800,000 participants, according to organizers' estimates.
"The best style to terminate a bad guy with a gun is 73 million millennials with a vote," tweeted activist Tyler Suarez, days before the D.C. march. Suarez, one of the organizers of a March For Our Lives outcome in Connecticut, is the nephew of Dawn Hochsprung, the slain master of Sandy Hook Elementary School, where xx children and half dozen adults were massacred in a shooting in 2012.
While March For Our Lives activists in contempo months have continued their efforts to reform the nation's gun laws, on May 18, ten students were murdered past a 17-twelvemonth-old classmate wielding a shotgun and a .38 caliber handgun.
"Sante Iron High, you didn't deserve this," tweeted Gonzalez. "You deserve more Thoughts and Prayers, and after supporting us [in the national school walkout March 14] we will be at that place to back up yous by raising upwards our voices."
In 2016, only 42.8 per centum of 18 twelvemonth olds were registered to vote and only 34.4 percent voted in the Presidential elections, HeadCount organizers noted.
Only how important is voter registration, followed by participation at the polls?
"Of the more 120 meg votes cast in the 2016 election, 107,000 votes in iii states effectively decided the election," the Washington Post reported on Nov. 11, 2016. The paper cited "razor-thin margins" which determined the winner-takes-all allotment of Electoral College votes in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Yet as many as 35 percent of eligible citizens in the United States were not registered to vote in the 2016 election, according to U.S. Demography figures. (Other researchers guess the share of non-registered eligible citizens is closer to 21 percent).
HeadCount notes that turnout for Congressional and local elections is even lower than in presidential contests. In 2014, less than xx percent of all eligible voters under thirty turned out to vote in the midterm elections, co-ordinate to the U.Due south. Census Bureau.
HeadCount ran the on-the-ground voter registration efforts at the March in Washington, DC and 29 other cities. In accelerate of Tuesday's day of activity, the organization released a guide to running customs and high school voter registration drives and set up a goal of 90 pct of American loftier schools hosting a voter registration drive before the terminate of this academic year.
"There'south an inequality in the education system when some schools have very organized voter registration efforts and others have nothing," said HeadCount executive director Andy Bernstein. "But this is one of those rare societal problems that can be fixed pretty hands. If some schools already practise a bully job helping students register, there's no reason all schools tin can't do the aforementioned."
HeadCount has been providing hands-on back up to students around the country who are organizing voter registration in their schools. They've also provided the same support to teachers and faculty.
HeadCount.org has registered close to 500,000 voters since it was founded in 2004, and has worked with more than 100 musicians, according to Bernstein. This bound, the arrangement registered voters at tour dates by an array of musicians, including The Avett Brothers, MGMT, Lucius, Hinds, The Decemberists, Franz Ferdinand, Chromeo, and David Byrne. This summertime, the organization has "a very large presence" at tour dates by Dead & Company, Phish and Dave Matthews Band, says Bernstein, and has also received back up from acts including Portugal. The Human and Vic Mensa.
"The music industry has been incredibly supportive of the March For Our Lives motion, and HeadCount's work in that space," Bernstein told Billboard Friday. "We've seen artists lend their fourth dimension and voice in a myriad of ways.
"Just I'll say this," he added, "the rock stars are the Parkland students. David Hogg has been championing our high school initiative for over a calendar month, and well-nigh of the schools got involved because someone saw one of his tweets."
Source: https://www.billboard.com/pro/march-for-our-lives-headcount-voter-registration/
Posted by: wassonpriphy.blogspot.com
0 Response to "How Many Voters Have Been Registered Through March For Our Lives"
Post a Comment