In a highly successful voter registration drive that began during Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) Empowerment Week, the union has registered almost 1,200 new voters.
In a climate where student engagement with political issues is being regarded as increasingly important, Trinity students turned out in their hundreds to avail of the union’s help to register over the last few weeks.
The union worked with the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), which is running a national “Get Regged” campaign, for its registration campaign that saw them register 1,178 students.
Though the initial plan was to start the process during Freshers’ Week, the union later decided to launch the initiative as an independent venture during Empowerment Week. Speaking to The University Times about the drive to register new voters, TCDSU Citizenship Officer Stephen Sheil, who ran the campaign, said: “That was an amazing day.”
During that campaign, the team signed up almost 500 students in one day alone. “We wanted to build on that, so at the March for Education people were milling about Front Square and we thought it was a perfect opportunity. We got another 160 odd votes there, just spur of the moment in fifteen minutes.”
The focus then moved to Trinity Hall, where Sheil and other facilitators distributed forms to every apartment before returning a week later to collect and post those that had been completed. “Of course when we came back a week later, half of them had lost them”, Sheil said. “So we gave them back, told them they had until a certain time that evening or until the next day.”
Asked how engagement with the process in Halls compared to that of the on-campus drive, Sheil explained: “I think first years almost want to get more engaged. They’re still finding themselves in college, so they don’t want to pin their flag to any mast too soon. They appreciated that student union was facilitating their registration to vote in ‘real elections’.”
On campus, where most older students are already on the register, the team employed more imaginative tactics to encourage those who had not already signed up. “We handed out stickers and lollipops – free things always work”, he explained. The stickers were particularly effective, as people would see them and then enquire as to how they could become registered too.
What likely contributed to the success of the initiative was the union’s decision to promote the campaign from an apolitical perspective. “I feel sometimes that students are getting bombarded with a lot of national issues as well as student issues and I feel like the easiest way to do it is just to approach them on a personal level”, Sheil said. Observing the success of this technique, he went on to detail how “we found that if we take it down a tone, and approach it at a human level people are more likely to engage with you”.
Sheil explained that though he enjoys seeing people engaging with the process to further their opinion, he said that it “doesn’t mind who you are, how you vote, as long as you are registered to do so”.
Although Friday was the last drive on campus to get this particular batch of registration forms submitted, the union will continue to promote voter registration among students. “There was a rumour going around that if you’re not registered by the 1st November then that’s it, you can never vote. That’s not the case, there’s just a little bit more of a process”, Sheil explained.
Though there has been a slight decrease in the number of students registering since the marriage equality referendum, when a large-scale national campaign was held to register students. Sheil explained that the JCR will have its own drive out in Trinity Hall. The union works with a Garda in Pearse Street, who accompanies the registration team on their various drives.
