Oklahoma voter registration deadline this Friday
As candidates Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump continue to campaign for the 2024 presidential election, University of Central Oklahoma professors are encouraging students to stay informed and be aware of the voter registration deadline coming up on Friday, Oct. 11.
“Oct. 11 is the last time you can submit a voter registration application in this cycle in the state of Oklahoma, so students definitely need to get registered to vote,” said UCO Political Science Professor Elizabeth Overman.
Registering to vote in the Nov. 5 election can be done by a few methods, such as applying online via the OK Voter Portal at oklahoma.gov, filling out a physical voter registration application form and mailing it to the Oklahoma State Election Board in Oklahoma City or by applying in person, which can be done at the Oklahoma County Election Board, as well as at most tag agencies, libraries and post offices.
Voter registration application forms can also be requested at UCO’s Department of Political Science, room LAN101 (Liberal Arts North 101).
“Every vote matters,” continued Overman.“You can’t run a democracy if you don’t have citizens that are engaged, and the first initial level of engagement starts with being registered to vote.”
Between March 14-21, 2024, Harvard University’s Institute of Politics conducted a poll titled the “Harvard Youth Poll,” with the goal of gathering data on how people ages 18-29 will vote in the upcoming presidential election.
During the poll, the 2,010 participants, who were categorized based on if they had said it was likely they would be voting in the next presidential election or not, were asked to state if they agreed or disagreed with certain statements, with one of them being, “politics is not relevant to my life right now.”
Of the people who said that it was likely they would be voting, 32% strongly disagreed with that statement, while 9% of those who said they were not likely to vote also strongly disagreed.
This result indicates that, of those who stated during the poll that it was likely they were going to vote in the 2024 presidential election, the majority believe that politics are not relevant to their lives right now.
Additionally, UCO Political Science Professor Jan Hardt said, “Students should absolutely care more about politics. Who we put into office can affect them directly.”