Party at the Polls - UM Twin Cities, MN

Hi, it’s Joe from University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

We have had a very busy and largely successful semester at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. We’ve hosted a large outdoor concert, started a website, held a lecture event featuring now prominent Congressman Keith Ellison, printed t-shirts, cosponsored two debates, printed voter guides, and run our usual business of tabling and recruiting. These things all undoubtedly helped to advance the cause of Democracy Matters and retaking democracy. However, none of them had the impact or were as rewarding as our Party at the Polls.

The premise of Party at the Polls was to attract a crowd near the polling place, ultimately increasing turnout. When we were planning our party, we realized that at the U of M, gathering a crowd is never a problem. Every day the central polling place on campus, Coffman Union, is packed with people. The problem with Coffman Union, however, is that most students cannot vote there. We decided to take a different approach. We would take the great mass of confused, would-be-voters and transform them into a mass of informed voters-to-be.

Our Party was planned by a team of five group members with one of them specifically in charge of the event. Besides planning, the preparatory work included renting a tent, ordering pizza, buying groceries, printing information, picking a space, making posters, and securing a permit.

The planning stage was focused on how to efficiently get information out to large numbers of people. Minnesota has the option of same-day registration, so we needed to tell people both how and where to vote. This was complicated by the fact that we needed to know which of the over 10 polling locations near campus to send students.

Our solution was hand-outs and laptops. Each person received a hand-out describing what they needed to register. If that person didn’t know which polling place they belonged at, we found it for them by searching for their address at our Secretary of State’s website.

Activities on election day included setting up the tent, making coffee and hot cocoa, and staffing the tables. For six hours during the day we answered questions, distributed food, found polling places, gave directions, and told people, “No, I’m sorry, you can’t just vote at Coffman Union, you have to go to your precinct.”

A group of foreign visitors stopped by our tent. They had come from south-eastern Asia to observe our elections process and to understand how our democracy functions. They spent a lot of time talking to us just trying to figure out why on earth we were out there. They thought for sure that we must be supporting some party or candidate. That we were there just for democracy, just because we believed that everyone should have their voice represented, even if it differs from our own, was almost too much to get by the language barrier. It was a moment where we had this sudden realization that our work really was affecting something. The Party at the Polls was a direct way for us to help our democracy. Most of our group’s efforts are indirect. They are aimed at education or influencing decisions that promote legislation which would benefit our democracy. By helping people to vote, though, we were working at the ground level of what makes our democracy work. By our best estimates over 700 people stopped by our tent about half of which were missing some piece of essential information. The sheer number of people that we were able to help made us realize that our work really does matter.