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Online Voting Service Keeps Students Alert And Ready For Election Day

Flickr.com photo of college students by U of PA Libraries.
Flickr.com photo of college students by U of PA Libraries.

There are roughly 200 partners signed up for TurboVote, including Ohio State, Cleveland State and the University of Akron.

The way it works is that after a college signs on – and pays an annual base fee of roughly $1,000 – its students can access TurboVote’s website.

There they may request registration materials and an absentee ballot.

Betsy Banks is the Director of the Center for Civic Engagement and Learning at Case Western Reserve University. It too, is a partner. Banks says TurboVote helps busy students stay engaged with the political process because their schedules and transportation needs don’t always let them visit the nearest Ohio Board of Elections office.

“So for us to be able to provide a resource like TurboVote where it’s just click on this website, and it’ll walk you through everything you need to do, and then provide the forms you need to sign and be able to send out texts and email reminders to “get out the vote on Election Day”…. that’s just really compelling for us, because it frees up our time to do other civic engagement activities with our students.”

The non-profit, non-partisan group, Democracy Works, is behind TurboVote which launched four years ago.

Its overall aim is to integrate the internet with the electoral process to make voting easier and more informative.