[S]tudents at three Vermont colleges are organizing walkouts on Election Day to bring their peers to the polls.
The actions are part of the national #WalkoutToVote movement launched by a coalition of youth activism and gun reform groups. Mackenzie Murdoch, an organizer and sophomore at Northern Vermont University, said there are walkouts planned at NVU, the University of Vermont, and Champlain College.
Walkouts are planned for 10 a.m. on Nov. 6, when students will convene at a predetermined location and then walk to their respective polling locations.
Getting young people registered to vote has become a centerpiece of the March for Our Lives movement that was started by the survivors of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. While speaking at an event in Burlington earlier this month, Parkland survivor David Hogg once again urged young voters to vote in November.
Murdoch emphasized that the effort in Vermont is non-partisan. But she said the political moment demands “a really powerful message that young people are engaged.”
“There’s not a lot of political engagement on this campus,” she said. “I’ve started more conversations if nothing else.”
People studying in Vermont have the choice of casting their ballots in the Green Mountain State or the state where they lived prior to going to school. (They cannot do both.)
The subject was a matter of some confusion at UVM last week, when president Tom Sullivan sent out schoolwide email encouraging students to head to the polls.
The email also said that “for our nearly 70% of undergraduates who are residents of other states, all of which have provisions for absentee voting, I urge you to review the voter eligibility in your respective states.”
That email caught the attention of Lea Terhune, a continuing education student and League of Women Voters member.
“This is telling 70 percent of the students that they need to vote where their parents lived,” she said.
Terhune reached out to the president’s office, as well as the secretary of state. Four days later, UVM director of federal and state relations Wendy Koenig sent out an email clarifying that “students from out of state attending UVM are eligible to register and vote in the Vermont city or town where they reside while attending UVM.”
Secretary of State Jim Condos said he thinks the email was an honest mistake.
“We asked that a clarification be sent out, and they did that,” he said.
