1. Student Government Associations. Meet with your student government and seek their endorsement before approaching your administration (see page 5). This will make it a lot easier to convince the administration to support your campaign.
2. Administration. It's important to get them on board from the beginning, because they have the power to reach all students and it will make your campaign a lot easier. Research what actions, if any, they have taken regarding voter registration on campus in the past. Check the toolbox (page 5) for more suggestions.
3. Campus Organizations and Sports Teams. Contact the leaders of student groups on campus and invite them to join in your efforts. This should include everyone from activist groups to residence hall associations, sport teams and fraternities.
4. Community: Begin reaching out to students, other faculty and staff, and local business serving students. Put out flyers, go door to door to businesses, call other student organizations, and make posters..be creative! Invite everyone to join your efforts by hosting a public meeting. Need more information on how to build your coalition? Visit the Building a Coalition section (page 3) of this guide.
   

   
   

1. Host a public meeting to discuss your Voter Registration Campaign strategy. (See appendix A on page 9 for a sample meeting agenda)
   

   
   

   • Designate tasks: who will contact the administration? Who will sit in with the student government? Look at our guide and decide who will be in charge of later events.
   • Set up your timeline.
   • Decide on what actions you would like to take. See the Outreach Methods section (page 7) for ideas of how to get students to register to vote.
     

     
     

2. Make your first priority to solicit your school's president and administration support for the campaign. Their official endorsement of this campaign will ensure that students and faculty all over campus are reached, and will increase response levels drastically. Depending on the school, however, your administration may not be responsive. See our toolbox (page 5) for tips on how to approach your administration.
   

   
   

3. Host a voter registration training to learn all about the process of registering to vote. Understand what you can and cannot do, and what laws are in place for your state. It's important to follow the laws and procedures carefully, because if students are inappropriately registered due to the campaign's error, they may not be able to vote! See our resource section (page 9) for important information about registration guidelines and ideas on how to conduct training.
   

   
   

4. Host a launch meeting to finalize your event schedule and outreach procedures. Know who will be in charge of which tasks, and who will volunteer for each day. See Appendix A (page 9) for a sample launch meeting Agenda.
   

   
   

5. Contact the local media to inform them of your voter registration drive and the activities you have planned. For sample a sample press release, see Appendix B (page 12).
   

   
   

1. Staff registration tables daily, and host regular activities such as a voter registration party, a bingo night, and/or give incentives like free dessert for registering. Be sure to check the outreach methods section on page 7 of this guide for more ideas.
   

   
   

2. Count the completed voter registration cards daily, and report the numbers to Earth Day Network weekly. Make sure you get a copy of each of the voter registration cards so that you can later contact these people to remind them to vote. Some states require that registration is sent in within 24 hours, so make sure you check with your state and SEND IN REGISTRATION CARDS! (This is obviously the most important step!)
   

   
   

3. Host a voter registration event on campus.
   

   
   

4. Report final numbers to your local media (see Appendix B) and to Earth Day network so that you can see the fruits of your efforts combined with schools all across the nation.
   

   
   

5. Have a party for your coalition as a reward for all your efforts and hard work. Celebrate the fact that you have participated in an important part for the democracy of our nation. Congratulations!

Step one: Re-establish your goals and develop your proposal—what exactly do you want? Before seeking official endorsement of your campaign, you need to figure out what your exact goals are and how you want your student government and administration to help you. You probably already have the bulk of this figured out from your initial

meeting with the core members of your campaign, and now is the time to take that information and move forward.

Step two: Get your student government's endorsement of your campaign. Their endorsement will likely make your University or College's administration take your request more seriously.



• Do your research. What has your school done in the past regarding voter registration? Has SGA approved of any programs similar to yours in the past or taken a clear stance on voting?
• Write a resolution that supports your proposal to have them endorse your campaign.
• Get a member of SGA to sponsor your resolution and introduce it to the assembly. Meet with the leaders before pitching it so they understand why they should pass it.
• Attend the meeting that will introduce your resolution and speak on its behalf.
  

Step three: Do some research on your administration. Find out what your President's interests and career have focused on and what issues they have supported in the past. Find a way to tie this into your campaign, for example: if they are interested in endowments, suggest how committing to a 100% voter registration turnout will increase interest in the media and look good to potential funders.

Step four: Consider some specific activities you would like your administration to do to get involved with your campaign. Here are some suggestions of what they might be interested in doing. In all of these examples, make sure you present clear directions as to where voter registration materials will be available and how you will be collecting registration forms.

Send the release to campus and community newspapers. Consider including supplemental background materials for outlets that may do an in-depth story.




• Speak at an Event. Have your President come to one of your voter registration events to urge people to register and vote!
• E-mail. Your college administration or student government can send out official emails to all students urging them to register to vote.
• Voice Mail. College dormitories have a voice mail system where you administration can leave messages. Have your president record an announcement to remind students to register to vote.
• Web. Your college administration may put a special link up about voter registration on your college's main website in the news or updates section.
• Mass Mailings. Have your campus administration include a voter registration card and packet of information on how to register to vote as a special announcement to all students. Or perhaps they can include it in a newsletter publication that they would be sending out anyway.

Step Five: Submit your proposal! Depending on your school, you may not be able to meet with the administration face to face. In any event, bring all of your materials and go to your administration’s office and ask about the correct procedures for submitting a proposal and/or setting up a meeting.

If you are unable to set up a meeting:

1. Follow procedures for submitting a proposal.
2. Check in frequently to find out the status of the proposal and ask for feedback—let them know that you are serious about your campaign.

If you are able to set up a meeting:

1. Decide who will represent your campaign. Invite a faculty advisor and someone from the student government to come along.
2. Introduce yourself and what you want to gain from this meeting.
3. Give a brief summary of your proposal
4. Ask for feedback and engage in conversation with your administrator. Listen to what he or she has to say and ask questions. This is a good way to show all the research and work you've done thus far, letting them know that you are serious and will continue to work hard.

After the meeting:

1. Send a thank you card and note to the person you met with.
2. Meet with your coalition, strategize and move forward.
   

Your coalition should include everyone in the community as well as key student leaders to help take your initiative to the next level.

Public Community

• Make and distribute flyers. Put flyers in public bulletins on campus, talk to local businesses and invite them along with their patrons. Usually businesses will allow you to put flyers up in certain areas.
  
• Your flyer should have basic information such as:
  

1. What you want: "Help get the vote out on campus!"
2. Who is sponsoring this effort? This is your core team members..is it a student group? Is there faculty on board? Is it just you and a few friends? Make sure there is a contact person listed on the flyer.
3. Who can join? Make sure it is clear that you want to include everyone in the community.
4. How can people join? Include where and when your first public meeting will be held.

Student Organizations

• Put together a list of all the different student groups that should be there. This list should include groups from all different political sides and student demographics.
• Contact these student leaders and invite them to the meeting. Let them know to bring anyone else they think will be interested.

Here are some great outreach methods that you can use to register people to vote. Make sure that in any of these methods where you are not directly speaking with people you include information on where voter registration materials will be located and how you will be collecting forms:

Tabling. Reserve a table in advance in a high traffic area such as the library, the student union, sporting events. This is the place where you will engage with other students and directly register them to vote. Keep lots of registration forms on hand and stock your table with promotional material and literature. Make sure someone is either physically staffing the table or in charge of taking home materials and keeping track of them at the end of the day. Depending on your campus's tabling rules and your reservation contract, you may be able to at least leave a sign or banner advertising your campaign on the table when someone is not able to be there.

Canvassing. Go door to door in your campus community or stand in high traffic areas with a clip board and plenty of registration forms. Like tabling, this is another effective and interactive action that will engage students directly and allow you to see immediately the effect of your work.

Literature drops. Flyers, posters, brochures, registration cards that are handed out door to door, at businesses, posted around campus and included in tabling events.

Before Class. Most professors would be happy to discuss voter registration within their curriculum for a day, give a brief blurb about your efforts or even let you get up in front of class before starting their lesson to urge students to register.

Student Newspaper. Talk to your student newspaper's editor to discuss a possible free public service announcement ad urging students to register to vote and get involved with your coalition. Or perhaps include a flyer or voter registration card loosely with the paper

Student Radio. Some college radios will offer time slots to student groups or important projects. Check with your local radio station to see if they can coordinate anything with your efforts.

Host Events. Be creative, have fun, and register people to vote! Have a voter registration bingo night or a pizza party in which registration cards go into a raffle to win prizes. Ask local businesses if they'd like to sponsor an event by offering incentives like free desert or a t-shirt to the first fifty registrants.

This guide provides you with everything you need to know in order to hold a voter registration training session. In addition, we suggest that you contact your state's website for detailed and up to date information on how to register to vote. Appendix D provides you with registration deadlines for each state as well as how to contact your state's Secretary of State or State Election Office.

Important! Some states require you to be 'deputized' in order to register people to vote. This means that volunteers must be certified by the state in order to help others fill out and submit voter registration cards. You can easily become certified by checking in with your Secretary of State or State Election Office, where you will most likely attend a short seminar (15 minutes to an hour long, depending on the state) with instructions on how to run a voter registration drive. In this event, you can have your group attend the seminar in lieu of hosting your own voter registration training event. The six current states that require you to be deputized are: Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Nebraska and Texas.

Which residence should you use? College students can register to vote at either their school address or their permanent address. Make sure to check with your state's residency rules, because some states require voters to wait a certain amount of days before being eligible to register after changing residence. If the deadline has passed to register or if a student decides to register at their permanent address, make sure they know the rules about absentee voting and give them the contact info for their state below. Also note that P.O. boxes are not acceptable addresses for voter registration. In the event that you don't have a physical, legal address at college, you can draw a picture where you live in a space designated at the bottom of the National Voter Registration Application.