Need to register to vote? This grad has you covered
Well, at least the 2020 presidential election is going to go off without a hitch {insert nervous eyeballs emoji}.
Yes. Of course. This being 2020, the chances of the 2020 presidential election running smoothly are about as likely as me managing to get my lunch plate into the dishwasher instead of the sink. Theoretically possible, not all that difficult to pull off, but still: Not happening.
Welp, at least there’s a few people out there seeking to make things as easy as possible in 2020. OK fine, maybe “a few” is stretching things. There’s at least one, and her name is Hope Perry.
Perry, who is bound for Princeton University in September after graduating Lawrence High School this past spring, has created a simple-in-nature, way-more-difficultthat-you-would-think-to-create website that simply/impossibly explains to people how to register to vote in their state.
“I sort of had the idea for a website for a while, then I was talking to a friend who is going to college in Florida and she asked if she could register to vote there,” Perry said. “I figured she could, but wasn’t positive, and spent a lot of time looking around, and eventually found the answer, but she has to meet a set of requirements.”
Perry then asked around to other friends heading out-ofstate, and none of them knew how to register to vote once they got there.
“I figured there has to be an easier way to have this information in one place,” Perry said.
And thus, witness the birth of CollegeVotersUnited.org, a onestop shop for all your voting questions answered in all 50 states. The site is aimed at college students, but can obviously be used by anyone, anywhere, at any time, for questions on how to register to vote wherever they may be.
Perry enlisted the help of friends and family in what amounted to a months-long effort to compile the information from each state. Some info was simple and easy to find. Other info … not so much.
“The biggest challenge was navigating some of the state’s websites,” Perry said. “Some of them have clearly been recently updated, some appear like they haven’t been updated since the dawn of the Internet.”
New Jersey’s state website, for those scoring at home, is “midtier,” according to Perry.
Another issue? Parsing the information. Again, some were relatively straightforward, like North Dakota, where you don’t have to register, but you must provide valid identification.
Other states? A little more complex, with - surprise, surprise New Jersey sorta “leading” the way in that department.
“To my recollection, New Jersey
is the only state that’s not standardized throughout the state,” Perry said. “It has different registration forms by county.” Of course it does. Love ya, Jerz. Perry obviously isn’t seeking fame or fortune with this .org operation; she just notes that 10 percent of the electorate is made up of college-age voters, and her website is simply helping that 10 percent navigate the surprisingly tricky world of voter registration.
With the election less than three months away, there’s still time for many people in many states to register to vote. If you know someone in that situation, send ‘em the link to Perry’s website. It just might make the difference.