Today, September 19th, 2023, is National Voter Registration Day. To celebrate, Ethan Stone and his friends from the California Democratic Party were out on the quad making sure students and faculty have registered to vote. 

Instead of only handing a paper registration, Stone had cards with information in Spanish and English which directed people to registertovote.ca.gov through a QR code. 

Since the last report released in 2021, total voter registration in the State of California has decreased by over 170,000, and the percentage of  Californians who are registered to vote decreased from 88.03% to 82.27%. This decline lends urgency to Stone’s objective of getting students to register.

“We’ve been very successful. Most of the people who are unregistered either registered or they took a card with a QR code,” said Stone.

Stone encouraged his fellow Americans to vote, saying, “I just point around and say, why do you think all this is here? It’s only because generations of people have voted. The other thing that I always tell people is if there’s one thing politicians pay attention to, it’s who votes. So if your neighborhood votes, your neighborhood gets attention. Your neighborhood doesn’t vote, not so much.” 

He then commented his feelings about the upcoming raise in tuition. 

“If every single CSU student registered and voted, I wonder whether the California board of regents would be raising the tuitions,” he said. 

The California Secretary of State website states students living away from home can still register to vote by using the Federal Post Card Application or the California Online Voter Registration system. 

For Stone, there are no excuses for students to delay voting registration.

“24/7. You can do it on your phone, you can do it when it gets boring in class. There aren’t any excuses really,” he said.

There is only one excuse Stone would accept.

“The only good excuse is ‘I’m not a Citizen.’ it is not, however, a good excuse for not registering your friends and family,” he said.

Last week Stone says he came across that exact situation. 

“I was canvassing on Saturday and was talking to a couple of guys who told me, ‘oh we cant register, were DACA recipients’ and I said ok,  you’re right you can’t vote but you have a really strong interest in how the vote comes out so take that interest, get every single US Citizen that you know and make sure they’re registered and make sure that they know that your ability to stay in this country depends on them voting and them voting the right way in that instance,” said Stone.

He then came across that situation again while registering people on campus today.

“I talked to a faculty member today and he said, ‘I can’t do it im an immigrant’ I gave him a card with the QR code and I said, put that on you know, next time you do a powerpoint slide, put the QR code on the powerpoint slide, tell every student in the class who isn’t registered, scan the QR code, get yourself registered, I’ll give you three minutes five minutes,” Stone said.

He continued to mention the power that person’s actions could have, saying, “That guy could have more influence in US elections than most citizens because he has access to a lot of unregistered young people.”

The Report of Registration released February 10, 2023 states 17-25 year olds make up 14.17% of registered voters in Stanislaus County and 26-35 year olds make up 18.96%. 

Other than registering to vote, Stone recommends you continue to use your influence to get others to join the movement, “If you wanna have more influence the first way to have more influence is beyond just having your own vote, is to get your friends and family registered, make sure that they all vote. Remind them at election time. That’s the first, easiest and most effective thing you can do.” 

To register to vote visit registertovote.ca.gov or to check your voter registration visit voterstatus.sos.ca.gov. You can also scan the QR code available in this article. 

If you have any questions about the voting in the state of California, visit the California government’s voting resources page. 

In California, voters must be registered 15 days before Election Day. If the 15 days have passed, Same Day Voter Registration may be available at polling locations.