Two campus groups will put their political differences aside Tuesday to increase the voter turnout among college students.
UNM's College Greens and College Republicans will stage a cooperative voter registration drive as part of the national campaign, the New Voters Project.
Trey Smith, co-chairman of the College Greens, said the project's goal is to sign up 3,000 new voters this semester, beginning Tuesday.
"We hope to bring a sense of civic duty to the students," Smith said. "Our goal is to have 200 registrations in a four-hour period."
The groups will be registering potential voters in the SUB from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Kazza Hinkle, UNM campus organizer for the New Voters Project, said apathy among voters aged 18-24 is a huge problem.
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"A lot of people don't vote because they feel politicians don't care about their issues," Hinkle said. "We're trying to change that. We want students to feel they have a direct voice to change things. I hope people take the opportunity to register. It's going to be about as easy as it can get."
The project is a nonprofit organization, and its goal is to increase the number of young voters. The campaign is directed at six states - Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, Oregon, Wisconsin and New Mexico. Project organizers expect voter turnout to rise 5 percent in the six states due to the registration drives. Organizers have also planned registration drives on more than 60 college campuses.
Willow Cornelius, a UNM student and New Voters Project volunteer, said she was excited by the possibilities presented by bipartisan cooperation.
"I think there is a severe lack of representation of young people in the voting system," Cornelius said. "Our generation is somewhat disillusioned with the government. We need to vote to express our desires and our beliefs in the community."
Smith said the drive would go a long way toward increasing awareness among UNM students.
"There are a variety of reasons students don't vote," he said. "The two major parties leave a lot of college students out of the picture. College students don't feel well represented by the government. We hope to help with that."
Smith said the combination of the two groups provides for a larger target group, even though the College Democrats declined to participate.
"We talked about it with the College Republicans last semester and planned it during the break," Smith said. "We've worked on several different things in the past with the College Republicans. Tuesday we'll put our politics aside and we'll get together to help register voters."
Sponsors for the project include the Pew Charitable Trust, the Graduate School of Political Management, state Public Interest Research Groups, Campus Contact, MTV's Rock the Vote, the Youth Vote Coalition and the Council for Excellence in Government. Together they aim to register more than 265,000 voters before November's presidential election.
