As we look back on 2008, Ohio PIRG and the Student PIRGs want to share some of our accomplishments with you.
NEW VOTERS PROJECT: YOUTH VOTE SURGES AGAIN
For the first time in 20 years, youth voter turnout surpassed that of voters over 65, with young people making up 18 percent of the electorate.
We placed 80 campus organizers on 100 college campuses in 22 states to run our New Voters Project this fall. These organizers recruited more than 2,200 dedicated student volunteers who gathered 118,000 registrations and made more than 440,000 personalized voting reminders. Our organizers and student volunteers registered more than 91,000 voters using the traditional methods of voter registration tables, classroom presentations, and dorm and neighborhood canvassing. In addition, we used some exciting technology - our online voter registration tool developed specially for us by CREDO Mobile. The tool allowed students to complete a voter registration form online, which was then emailed to them to be signed and mailed in. Over 40,000 students from almost all 50 states downloaded a voter registration form thanks to our new technology. We expect those 40,000 downloads to result in more than 26,000 voter registrations.
Text messaging was one of our greatest success stories this election. Our volunteers generated 250,000 text messages reminding people to vote - over half of our total Get Out The Vote contacts. This included 63,000 texts that Student PIRGs sent to our voter registration lists through our partnership with CREDO Mobile. Volunteers also asked every person we phoned, canvassed, and tabled to text a vote reminder to their friends, generating an additional 187,000 texts sent. We assume that friend-to-friend texts have an even greater turnout impact than anonymous texts from PIRG.
Our volunteers continued to work tirelessly on Election Day, providing support and entertainment for students at the polls. At many polling places, students had to wait for more than two hours to vote and our volunteers kept things fun and fast with ingenious distractions. At Ohio State University, volunteers handed out coloring books and doughnuts and at Temple University, volunteers handed out umbrellas and ponchos for students waiting in the rain.
Finally, amidst expectations that there would be widespread voting problems on Election Day, we recruited 60 students to monitor high-risk polling places all day. The students had a checklist of things to look for and inquire about and implemented a rigorous reporting drill in which volunteers reported their results to our central command every three hours. Through this poll-monitoring program, we were able to flag voting problems in Ohio, Florida, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and Arizona and react immediately. In Florida, we caught pollworkers incorrectly turning away students who needed to change their registration address. We promptly reported the problem, and had lawyers on the scene by 9:30 a.m. to solve the problem.
More photos, highlights and stories online. http://www.newvotersproject.org
LOWERING TEXTBOOK PRICES
In August, Congress adopted a new PIRG-crafted law requiring textbook publishers to disclose textbook prices to faculty before the time of sale, correcting an important mechanical flaw in the textbooks market. The law's passage came after four years of sustained activity by the Student PIRGs - including the release of seven investigative reports into the abuses of the textbook industry that generated national and local media coverage from hundreds of outlets in all 50 states, as well as organizing 2,000 faculty to speak out against high textbook prices - caught the eye of members of Congress.
STATE CAMPAIGN VICTORIES
PIRGs in other states also had some exciting victories.
Bringing High-Speed Rail to California. CALPIRG students and staff played a major role in the passage of Prop 1A, California's High-Speed Rail program. Fifty students spent their spring break on a bike tour of the proposed train route, holding media conferences with local officials along the way to build support for the measure. Later, hundreds of CALPIRG activists blanketed the state with pro-high-speed rail messages to put the measure over the top.
Implementing Global Warming Solutions in Massachusetts. MASSPIRG students played an early and critical role in the passage of the state's new global warming law, the Global Warming Solutions Act. Students held town hall meetings in western Massachusetts that turned out hundreds of residents, generated local media attention, and won the support of important state legislators who later helped pass the bill into law.
Thanks again for your support. We're looking forward to an exciting spring semester!
