Penn Dems see registration woes

When Philadelphians come out to essentially choose their next mayor in May, many Penn students won't be joining them.

At least, that's the indication from the Penn Democrats' voter-registration drive.

Penn Dems President and Wharton sophomore Clayton Robinson said the organization registered about 300 students this semester, a steep drop-off from the several thousand it registered before the fall midterm elections.

He chalked up the low number of students the group registered to the fact that "most students don't care about this election" - an election that will occur the day after Commencement, when few students will be on campus to vote.

Penn Dems also handed out about 3,000 voter-registration packets with absentee ballots, though it is not known how many of those ballots were actually utilized.

Robinson added that he is "very pleased with the infrastructure we put together," including several different approaches to registering students, from going door to door in the college houses to setting up tables in Houston Hall and the dining halls during meals.

But, he admitted, "we faced a very uphill battle."

When asked why the group hadn't set up a table in the Quadrangle over Spring Fling to capitalize on the massive student presence there - much in the same way that rental car company PhillyCarShare did - Robinson said the Penn Dems "gave serious thought" to the idea but ultimately decided that the Quad "wasn't the right venue" for student outreach because the atmosphere there wasn't conducive to talking about city political issues.

Meanwhile, Penn Leads the Vote, the non-partisan campus organization dedicated to increasing student-voter turnout, wasn't involved in any registration efforts for the election.

Because the primary is closed, the group would have had to push students to register as Democrats, "and that's not something we're prepared to do," president and College senior Bren Darrow said.

"We are not launching a registration effort," he added. "We don't want to encourage people to register with a particular party."

Dawn Maglicco, director of Penn's Office of Government and Community Affairs, said her office, while encouraging student registration, relies on students to take a more active role in he actual process of getting people registered.

Maglicco and her staff see their job as making sure voter registration and absentee ballot forms are "available and as widespread as possible," she said.

To that end, the University distributed more than 800 absentee ballots around campus to people and places like college house deans and the Graduate Student Center.

"It's our role to make them available and to support in that way students' efforts," Maglicco explained.

She noted that student groups seemed to underestimate the amount of effort it would take to register students for an election taking place over the summer.

"Normally, we see a lot more student-led activity," Maglicco said. "It didn't feel like . people [had] the idea . that they would have to take extra steps."

Though the office hands out the forms, it doesn't keep track of how many of them are filled out and mailed into the county Board of Elections in the same way the Penn Dems do.

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