MV Outreach holds voter registration event

After struggling to find adequate information on local elections and voter registration, seniors Emma Wilhoit and Sue Kim decided to take action. The two created a project through MV Outreach and set up a way for students and members of the community to get registered to vote and find information more easily. The two held a voter registration event during lunch on Tuesday, Oct. 4 and at the school’s home football game on Friday, Oct. 14.

The idea for the project came from personal experiences, according to Kim.

“Emma and I did our own research on some of the [local] candidates because we were interested in the upcoming election, and we found that we couldn’t find all the information about the candidates or how to actually get registered to vote,” Kim said. “We thought if we can’t find this information, then how will everyone else be able to? So we thought it would be awesome to get all that easily accessible for the public and our student body.”

Getting seniors and community members registered to vote was a big step towards increasing the number of voters in the area for Kim and Wilhoit.

“We were inspired to increase voter participation and fight against apathy in our area,” Wilhoit said. “We thought that our high school would be a great place to do it so as soon as people turn 18, they’re registered. We decided to set it up at the football game as well so that people in the community could also get registered.”

Kim and Wilhoit hope to make a difference in the number of people that vote in the upcoming election.

“We hope that there will be increased voter turnout. We’ve had about 30 people register with us and so that’s 30 people that weren’t registered to vote before, so it’s great that they are now,” Kim said.

Kim says that informed voting is key overall, but also in their project.

“It’s important to us because especially with the election coming up, a lot of people don’t know about local candidates. Our mission is to get people not only registered to vote, but also be more informed about candidates,” Kim said.

No matter how many people that are actually able to get registered, Wilhoit says that simply getting the word out is important to them.

“We’ve had a fair amount of people get registered,” Wilhoit said. “What’s nice is that it gives people the opportunity to come back if they missed it at lunch when we did it before or if they have just been in the community and haven’t gotten registered yet. We’ve gotten some people that don’t go to Mill Valley registered too, so that’s been really great.”

Getting students and the community more interested in voting and to register students and community members to vote easily are the overall goals for the two, according to Wilhoit.

“We’re just hoping to get people more involved and more excited about voting,” Wilhoit said. “It’s really important, especially right now with this upcoming election. We want to make it easy for everyone to exercise their right to vote.”