By Kathryn De Shields
When the Oct. 6 register to vote deadline arrived, 1½ months of employment ended for a voter registration crew at Hampton University.
Arron Mundy, a junior Management major from Inglewood, Calif., registered people to vote for a month. He joined the Community Voters Project to help people attending Hampton University to register for the first time, or re-register in Virginia.
“I was registered in California, but I re-registered in Virginia,” Mundy said. “I figured that Barack Obama is already going to win in California, so I want to take my vote elsewhere where it will matter.”
Brittany Smith, sophomore biology major from Bronx, N.Y., decided to register people when she learned how many people she knew weren’t registered.
“A black man running for president is a big deal,” Smith said. “I would hate for my friends and people on campus to miss this opportunity to vote for a good thing.”
Smith and Mundy learned about the Community Voters Project through advertisements posted around campus and online e-mails.
Both students were paid by the hour to walk around campus and register people. There was a quota that they have to meet: A minimum of 12 voter registrations had to be turned in per day.
“I had to chase people down and talk to anyone who was walking around,” said Mundy. “I’ve registered over 200 people so far.”
According to Mundy, along with the positive feeling of getting classmates registered, the $8.50 per hour he earned helped to pay his rent.
At the end of the day, Mundy, Smith and other participants returned to the Community Voter Project site located on Mercury Boulevard in Hampton to turn in applications for processing.
The fact that Virginia for the first time in over 40 years is a battleground state versus an automatic win for the Republican Party is a determining factor in the Voter Project. College students were encouraged to re-register in Virginia because some people believe that the absentee voting system is faulty and people don’t bother to vote at all.
“If everyone at Hampton was registered,” Smith said, “and surrounding colleges, it may make a big difference in who’s going to win the election.”
Legal constrictions and competition was a downside of the job.
According to Smith, about 20 people were getting paid to register voters and the numbers of remaining people not registered quickly dwindled.
“It’s getting harder because everyone I ask says that they have already been registered by someone else,” Smith said. “It’s hard to meet quotas now.”
According to a report on the WVEC TV-13 News Web site, three people were charged with voter registration fraud, and one of the suspects was a student, said the report. Voter registration workers can’t forge signatures, or mark an applicant’s paper in any way lest they face up to 10 years in federal prison per fraudulent form.
“Money is not worth time in prison,” said Mundy. “I don’t know why that person did what they did.” Despite strict rules in dealing with the forms, Mundy and Smith still believe the opportunity to register people was worthwhile.
“Knowing that I got people registered,” Mundy said, “and that they are going to vote on Nov. 4 is going to feel really good.”
The writer is a junior at the Hampton University Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications.
