SGA Encourages Student Voter Registration, Helps Students Order Absentee Ballots For Election 2024
Emma Bonney staffs the SGA’s “Voting Away From Home 101” table. Photo by Patrick D. Lewis
By Patrick D. Lewis
The CUA Student Government Association (SGA) held a “Voting Away From Home 101” event last week to help students register to vote, encourage them to vote in the 2024 general election, and educate them about how to do so while away from home.
The event was held in the Pryzbyla Center weekdays from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. from October 3 to October 11. Members of the SGA boards and task forces volunteered to staff the table and answer questions from students about registering to vote and getting absentee ballots or using remote voting options. The SGA also released a “Voting Away From Home 101” guide, authored by senior politics and philosophy double major and SGA Research Director Matthew Cutrona, that includes comprehensive information about remote voting in every U.S. state and the District of Columbia.
One of the volunteers at the table was Emma Bonney, a freshman politics major who also serves as Associate Director of the SGA Campus Wellness Executive Initiative.
Bonney spoke about why it was important for her to be involved in Voting Away From Home 101.
“I believe that the system does not work if people are not voting,” Bonney said. “I don’t think that it’s fair to complain about politics if you don’t contribute to it, so I believe it’s very important for everybody to vote.”
Two students had already visited the table just minutes after Bonney set it up Thursday morning. One of those students was freshman philosophy major Tia Victoria Santicola Jones, who said her philosophy classes helped change her mind about voting.
“I never thought I would vote,” she said. “I always felt that, like, it didn’t really matter if I voted,” she continued. “But at least you could try.”
Santicola Jones came to the SGA table to get information about registering to vote and getting an absentee ballot from her home state of New York.
“This was really helpful,” she said of the SGA voting initiative. “I was also, then, like, ‘Oh, I guess I’m not going to vote, because I don’t even know how I’d go about this.’ But, I’m friends with Emma [Bonney], and she was like, ‘I’m running this table, you should pop by.’”
The general election is on November 5, 2024.
