How journalism can help people register to vote

September 25 is National Voter Registration Day. One of the major obstacles to voters voting is that they’re not registered. The more ways we invite people to register, the more likely it is that they will. That makes it more likely that they will show up at the polls in November.

When students returned to school in August, the Ithaca (NY) Times published the New York voter registration form on its front page (the back side of the form is on page 2). (Picture below.)

Ithaca Times with New York State voter registration form on the front page

Imagine if other papers and other media outlets did the same— thousands of people would be invited to civic life who had never been invited before.

It would be pretty simple, if the editorial policy allows it:

  1. Contact your state’s board of elections to learn about constraints and legal uses of the state voter registration form. (And to make sure they’ll accept a form on newsprint, or what the constraints might be for putting a link to online voter registration on your website.)
  2. If it’s legal, on September 25, publish the voter registration form on your front page (if you’re on paper, put the back of the form on page 2, aligned so a tear-out would look just like the thing the state election department issues). Extra credit for finding the voter registration form by yourself without having to ask for help.
  3. Link to your state’s online voter registration website (we can help you find it if you need that), or to vote.gov (which will direct users to the appropriate state’s site) from your website.

That’s it.

We’ll be watching. We plan to track sitings of media-published voter registration forms. We’re hoping your masthead will appear in our list. If you tell us ahead of time that you’re going to do it, we will promote the hell out of it on social media. (Maybe you don’t need that. But we do.)

Contact:

hello@civicdesign.org

Updates: