Organizations fail to
register voters
By Kelly Lucas
Campus
Editor
The Tippecanoe Voter Registration Office received
nearly 1,000 calls Monday from concerned voters wanting to know if they
were registered or not.
A small number of students on campus say they registered
to vote through various campus organizations but say they never received
voter registration cards; some also visited the polls Tuesday to find
their names were not on the list.
Robyn McGimsey, a senior in the School of Consumer
and Family Sciences, was one of those students. McGimsey, who registered
to vote in late September at a booth in the Union, said she never received
a voter registration card, so she called the Tippecanoe County Voter
Registration office, only to find she wasn't registered.
"When I called the office I was extremely upset,"
said McGimsey, who was prepared to vote in her first presidential election.
"I could have voted in the last presidential election, but I didn't
care. This year I researched the candidates and was prepared to vote.
I was really disappointed."
Hilary Snover, a junior in the School of Agriculture,
experienced a similar situation, except she didn't find out until she
was at the polls.
"I was devastated," said Snover, who went to McCutcheon
Hall to vote only to find out she wasn't registered. "I was really looking
forward to voting in my first presidential election."
But Snover wasn't the only student at McCutcheon
Hall who experienced problems. She said the man she spoke to who was
handling the voting at McCutcheon Hall had turned away several students
that day who thought they were registered but weren't on the list.
"The girl behind me had the same problem," said
Snover.
According to a representative from the Tippecanoe
County Voter Registration and Election Board, the board received a lot
of calls from Purdue students saying they never received their voter
registration cards. The representative said that this may have been
because the student provided his home address rather than his campus
address; therefore, the student's voter registration form would have
been sent to his home county.
But Snover said she did fill out the registration
form with her campus address. She said she was originally going to renew
her registration in Lake County, but for convenience, she decided to
register here.
Both Elizabeth Sickels, president of the College
Republicans, and Eric Murbach, president of the College Democrats, said
their organizations turned in all voter registration forms by the Oct.
8 deadline. Both organizations took a part in registering students to
vote.
Murbach said he has reason to believe that the
voter registration office was behind schedule when registering students
to vote.
Murbach said he has spoken to several people who
have said the office was behind and were having trouble getting all
of the voter registration forms processed.
The representative wouldn't specify whether or
not all persons submitting a voter registration form were registered,
but did say the office had not seen a push for student registration
as strong as this year's.
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