Penn's international students may not have been able to vote in yesterday's presidential election, but at least 60 of them helped to make sure that the voting went as smoothly as possible.
Along with 30 Penn Law School students, the group volunteered with the Committee of Seventy -- a bipartisan watchdog group -- to patrol Philadelphia area polling places yesterday and search for problem areas all day.
Yesterday morning, James Redfern, a John Kerry supporter and British graduate student in the Wharton School and the School of Arts and Sciences, was part of a field group that checked in on the polling place located at the Penn Center for Rehabilitation and Care at 36th and Chestnut streets.
While nobody was prevented from voting, there was some friction between the Democratic poll watcher and some of the Republican election officials.
Upon arriving, the Committee of Seventy volunteers recorded testimony from the Democratic poll watcher, who complained that she was being intimidated. The group was able to help settle the dispute and smooth things over.
"I think it helped we were there," said Marissa Vigneault, a Ph.D candidate in art history at Bryn Mawr College.
"It wasn't very serious, but it could've gotten pretty nasty," she said. "It helped having independent people there" to ease the tension.
By helping work through some of the difficulties, the international students hope to gain insight into the American election process.
"It was really something that came from the students' end," said Shalini Bhutani, Penn's director of international student and scholar services. "There is an interest among international students to understand the [American democratic] process."
Bhutani's office helped coordinate the effort with the Committee of Seventy after a number of students approached her earlier this year about possible ways to get involved in the election. There was a positive response when the idea of working with a bipartisan group like the Committee of Seventy was put forth.
"Mainly, I wanted to get involved," Redfern said.
"I didn't want to canvass for Kerry," he continued, "because it's not my election to meddle in. Committee of Seventy being bipartisan, I felt like this was something I could do."
Bhutani added, "We wouldn't do anything that didn't present both sides of the picture."
The volunteers were generally broken up into field groups of three people and given two to three divisions to patrol. The function of the volunteers was to circulate around polling places and "provide information to voters, protect voters' rights," according to Chris Sheridan, research director for the Committee of Seventy.
If irregularities were observed, the volunteers were able to take affidavits and gather testimony from those involved.
Overall, Sheridan explained, the volunteers were there to "witness and document" problems at polling places.
Sheridan said that the Committee of Seventy, which runs the program each year, had 400 volunteers this election, up from their typical number of around 60.
The reason for this dramatic increase in volunteers is the high general interest in this year's campaign. For international students, however, Bhutani pointed out that many of them come from places with different types of government and were interested in learning about American democracy.
"Just silly things, like seeing the actual polling places, make [the process] real," Redfern said. "You feel like you've contributed."
