Here are some examples of voter registration and participation activities going on at campuses across the country.  If you have a creative idea to share we’d love to hear from you, please send them to vote@naicu.edu.

• At Goucher College (Baltimore, MD), students, faculty, and staff are invited to gather at a central location on campus each night of the presidential debates. On Election Night, the campus will gather as a community to watch the returns, enjoy pizza and engage in informal political discussions with the college’s president and members of the political science department.

• Lawrence University (Appleton, WI) and University of California, Irvine have created MyElectionDecision.com an interactive Web site to help students make informed decisions in the upcoming election. The site provides policy statements by unidentified candidates, then asks students to rate the importance of different issues and assess their closeness to candidates' positions on a set of critical issues. Users receive a weighted score telling them which candidate they support.

• It’s important to keep students involved even after the registration deadline has passed. Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles, CA) will work with campus entities, such as our student newspaper, to coordinate a “countdown to the election,” with various events to drum up excitement in order to get students out to vote. 

• As part of their orientation to collegiate life at Le Moyne College (Syracuse, NY), first-year students share a common reading experience prior to the start of each fall semester.  This year’s theme is "Campaign 2008 – The Media, the Message, and the Millennial Student."  The interactive assignment embeds students’ reading assignment into “Ning,” a social network site created just for them. The site offers “Ning,” as it is called, is being used exclusively by Le Moyne’s Class of 2012.  It is being used as an active learning tool about the readings, a safe place for students to find their voice about political issues, and includes weekly polls about their attitudes toward voting and the candidates. “Ning” also provides a link for students to register to vote.