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Are you registered to vote? What about your co-workers and family? Do you know who’s on the ballot and what they stand for? Are you voting in this year’s General Election?
In four of the last five elections, Indiana has been in the bottom 10 states for voter turnout. Indiana also ranks in the bottom 10 for civic literacy. OneMoreVoice.com, a nonpartisan initiative created by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, intends to change that through a coordinated, statewide campaign. With a driver’s license or state I.D., Hoosiers can visit OneMoreVoice.com and register to vote quickly and easily. The site also provides quality, nonpartisan information on the candidates who will appear on the ballot, based on the voter’s home address.
OneMoreVoice.com does not support a specific set of candidates or political platform. Its goal is simply to reach 750,000 of the state’s estimated 1.7 million unregistered voters and to provide the support they need to register, understand the issues, and show up to vote. Think of OneMoreVoice.com as a digital voter guide.
“The idea of encouraging Hoosiers to vote without caring how they’ll vote is a really dangerous, scary idea to the political class,” says Bill Moreau, cofounder of Indiana Citizen Education Foundation. “We’re trying to mobilize this statewide effort to increase turnout by 20%. It would also have the effect to increase turnout by 600,000, going from about 2.8 million in 2016 to 3.4 million this year.”
How You Can Help
“We think there are about 1.7 million fellow Hoosiers in the voting-age population who are not registered to vote,” says Moreau.
The Chamber and Community Foundation of St. Joseph County have partnered to support the OneMoreVoice initiative. While the initiative’s target audience is the first-time voter, as employers and co-workers, you have the ability to inform and educate your staff and fellow colleagues about the importance of people using their voice to vote. The candidate profiles on the site are particularly helpful to learn more about those “down” ballot candidates.
“How much can employers do to promote voter registration and turnout? As long as it is done on a completely nonpartisan basis…you’re good,” says Moreau.
The Chamber encourages you to use the resources on OneMoreVoice.com, which include marketing assets, to share with fellow employees, friends, family and others.
“The reasons why our fellow citizens don’t vote has much to do with the feeling of powerlessness as anything else. I don’t matter. My vote doesn’t matter,” says Moreau. “It’s also useful to remember that these are excuses. It couldn’t be easier to register anymore.”
Moreau points out that last year, for instance, mayors were elected in races where there was just 20% turnout, meaning that 11% of the eligible voters in that municipality put that mayor in office. “We accept the outcome until the moment that we don’t. And, that’s going to be a bad moment for democracy.”
The deadline to register to vote is October 5, and you can go through the OneMoreVoice.com site to register. An individual simply needs a state I.D. or driver’s license to do so. The General Election is November 3.
