Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Conestoga High group registers new voters
Conestoga High New Voters coordinate successful registration drive
The New Voters group reached its goal of registering at least 85 percent of eligible student voters at Conestoga.
TREDYFFRIN » Jahnavi Rao, a Conestoga High School Senior, started 2018 New Voters, a grassroots political organization, after the 2016 election. New Voters is a non-partisan group that works to give a voice to those who were not eligible to vote in 2016, and to empower youth in general. New Voters continued to grow, culminating in a large scale voting drive for those eligible in 2017.
On Oct. 4, a group of 40 student volunteers visited all the senior homerooms, where they distributed “Pledge to Vote” cards and handed out voter registration forms to the eligible students. The following day, the group received 48 completed forms, and by Oct. 6, they had 61 forms back. Still needing 55 more forms to hit their goal of 85 percent completed registration, the group was prepared to do whatever was needed to accomplish this goal. After volunteers worked tirelessly over that weekend recruiting more voters, they had an additional 74 voter registrations by Sunday evening.
“It’s actually so incredible how driven the volunteers were, and I am genuinely still blown away by the lengths that the volunteers went to register students,” said Jahnavi.
She reported that volunteers waited outside sporting events, cold called houses from the phone book, walked into homerooms looking for unregistered students and even used texting to reach out to the students who were not registered. By that Monday night, the group had 102 students registered (75 percent) and were only 14 voters short. With a final push by everyone involved, the group surpassed their 85 percent goal, registering a total of 118 students to vote.
Before Jahnavi began this drive, she did not realize how difficult it would be to register 85 percent of the class. This goal allowed for no margin of error, and the group would need every student to participate in order to fulfill the final goal. There were students that no one in the group had ever talked to, but they managed to reach out to each and every one as a result of their determination and persistence.
The Pennsylvania Departments of State and Education, in collaboration with Inspire U.S., recently launched the Governor’s Civic Engagement Award for high school students throughout the state. The award is intended to recognize and commemorate the efforts of the next generation of leaders to educate, engage and inform their fellow students about how to get involved in the voting process.
Inspire U.S. is a 501(c)3 nonpartisan program that has aided Jahnavi and 2018 New Voters through providing valuable advice and insights from their previous successful registration drives across the country.
As a result of attaining 85 percent of eligible student voters, Conestoga High School earned the Gold Level Award Distinction. This entitles the Student Ambassadors (volunteers) and Conestoga High School to receive award certificates from Gov. Tom Wolf and Robert Torres, acting secretary of state of Pennsylvania.