Rock The Vote Stops By State College
By: Aaron Cheslock
Updated: November 6, 2012
The Rock The Vote campaign makes the final stop of its Atlantic tour in State College, it's helping hundreds of kids sign up and register to vote, while also, teaching them about the Voter ID laws. Subhashini Charyulu is one of the students that is happy they came.
"I think it's really nice of them to come up here, cause it's real easy for me, or else if I had to go all the way to downtown, like I'm new to this area..."
Charyulu's a junior at Penn State. She's never voted before, but plans to this year. She says if the Rock The Vote campaign didn't come to State College, she might not have voted this year.
"It was an easy way to register here... I couldn't find the buildings, like every time something would come up..."
Chrissy Faessen's the Vice President of Marketing with Rock The Vote, she says contrary to what most people think, students do care about the election. But they don't necessarily fall on one side of the aisle or another.
"students don't identify with political parties, they're really driven to the polls for the issues they care about. So if were talking about student debt, if were talking about graduating from college and looking for a job, and how each of the candidates is going to address that issue, they're absolutely paying attention and care."
Many students, like sophmore Michael McCauley, still don't know about the Voter ID laws.
"Did you get a sticker on your student ID card?" "I didn't."
"Did you know you need one?" "I did not."
"Do you know what the Voter ID laws are?" "I do not."
Faessen says that they're teaching students about the laws as they are now, even though they're now being looked at again in the court system.
"We're operating as if they're going to need the photo identification to head to the polls... If it changes, then we'll e-mail, we'll text them, we'll let them know, but right now they need an identification and that's what were telling them."
The event ended at 4 but just hours ago, there were hundreds, maybe thousands lined up here to see Jack Johnson or G-Love tonight, but Rock The Vote's just happy that hundreds came to sign up, they figure that young voters will make up 25% of this years electorate.
