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Dotters-Katz Voter Reg Effort Questioned

When ASUO President Dotters-Katz kicked the OSA campus coordinator off campus, you could almost hear the heads exploding at OSA headquarters. Now, like any good lobbying group that has been called out as unnecessary, the OSA is in full-on self-justification mode. And it begins with a story in the Daily Emerald, in which we are introduced to a troubling side effect of Dotters-Katz’ rash move: without OSA there will be no voter registration at the UO. Well, according to the student body president of PSU, anyway.  “I let him know how hard it’s been to not have (a campus organizer) for the last couple of months,” ASPSU President Hannah Fisher confides to the ‘Ol Dirty. “If U of O fails then we all fail,” says Fisher of the OSA’s statewide voter reg effort. “If it’s not broken you don’t fix it.”

But Dotters-Katz doesn’t seem too concerned about the dire warnings from Portland. In fact, his executive has publicly committed to registering 10,000 students at the U of O. Dotters-Katz tells the ODE: “there’s going to be a huge presence on campus, and we expect that we will met our goal due to the effective planning of my team and the work of a huge corps of volunteers.” From classrooms to club sports to the Athletic Department, Dotters-Katz plan seems to have left nowhere to hide from hordes of voter registrators. And yes, he does somehow expect to do this with help only from Building Votes, a Bus Project-affiliated initiative.

And what of the criticism from Fisher that “not having a vote organizer on campus is going to make it a lot harder to meet his voter registration goal?” Well, if we look back to the last election year, we can see that the OSA (via then-Legislative Affairs Honcho Emily McLain) registered “only” 6,876 students. Now that’s quite an accomplishment, but it also means that if Dotters-Katz only achieves half of his goal he’ll still nearly match the OSA’s last election year result. And he’ll have saved students $30k, or over one dollar per student per year in the process. So when you inevitably get hassled to register to vote this fall, please just do so. It’s an easy way to reward leadership that takes on challenges to save students money, instead of outsourcing a simple job to a cynical lobbying group.

  1. Slade says:

    Comparing voter reg numbers in an off year to reg numbers in a presidential election year is pretty silly.

  2. daniels says:

    nope, J isn’t drunk Jacob Daniels, but I’m sure I was drunk that night.

  3. human nature says:

    I wonder how rallying Greek Life for voter registration is gonna work out . . . most don’t need to change addresses and they don’t care enough to actively register those outside of Greek Life

  4. Fuck jared axelrod says:

    fuck jared axelrod, he was stoned the whole time he was prez and is a true asshole

  5. Concerned Student says:

    J = drunk jacob daniels

  6. J says:

    “UO has 20,394 students. Each would need to pay more than $1 to reach $30,000

  7. Niedermeyer says:

    10k is obviously an ambitious goal, but keep in mind that every time you move to a new address you have to reregister. I’d guess that between new students, students who have moved, and students who weren’t registered, there’s 10k in potential “new” registrations out there.

    Little Marge actually makes my point for me. There’s a huge coalition of voter registration efforts, particularly targeting young (i.e. democrat) potential voters. Those groups still have every incentive to help Dotters-Katz meet his goal. Eliminating a $30k OSA campus coordinator position won’t negatively impact voter reg efforts at the UO, despite their (and the ASPSU prez’) protests to the contrary.

    In fact, if we assume that the campus coordinator was personally responsible for every voter registered in 2006 (and I’m sure Emily McLain would contest that) students would have paid $4.36 per registration that year. That’s a $30k salary divided by 6,875 registrations. That’s not very efficient at all.

  8. Ian says:

    This money would be better spent discouraging old people from voting.

  9. Concerned Student says:

    J = stoned Jared Axelrod

  10. Jan says:

    UO has 20,394 students. Each would need to pay more than $1 to reach $30,000 — about $1.47.

  11. J says:

    Sorry for two consecutive comments, but how do you get that $30K is more than $1 per student per year? When did UO’s enrollment get that high?

  12. J says:

    Are there even 10,000 unregistered voters at UO? I guess that’s including people who’ve moved or aren’t Oregon voters, but that seems like an awfully high number, with or without OSA. I’ve graduated, moved on and registered in my new state, so it won’t matter to me, but I wonder where he got that number. It’s a great goal and I hope he comes as close to it as possible and that every one of those students votes, but … really?

  13. Jan says:

    Any word on whether Building Votes is being paid with student funds for its help? If not, I would say it doesn’t really matter who is involved with getting the vote out, just as long as money isn’t being wasted on the effort.

  14. Large Marge says:

    A little research would have paid off here. I used to volunteer for these schmucks back when I actually cared about when people vote.

    The OSA, OSPIRG, and Building Votes are in a partnership under the name Student Vote Coalition. So, if Dotters-Katz has dumped OSA and is now working with Building Votes, he is still working with the group in coalition (they all share numbers). As long as he works with any three of the group, he’s working with them all.

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