By Aleksandra Sidorova
Three students who make up the group Plattsburgh Votes are entering the final stretch of their voter education work. There is just a week and a half left to cast a ballot — and one day to register.
The students — senior political science majors Angelina Livingston and Nadia Potts and junior computer science major Iskita Gurung — spend hours tabling in the Angell College Center and Feinberg Library as well as presenting in classrooms.
“There’s been a lot of rhetoric that voting doesn’t matter and that there’s a lot of stark differences between candidates, and that makes people want to be outside of politics instead of getting involved with it,” Livingston said. “We’ve just been trying to be nonpartisan and trying to bring it back to the fact that this isn’t about Kamala Harris or Donald Trump — there’s so much more to it.”
Gurung, Livingston and Potts’ work is an internship with the college, and professors Daniel Lake and Ben Medeiros serve as their supervisors.
The group connects students with voter registration resources, brings to the Board of Elections any forms students completed on-site and helps students identify what is at stake in the election.
After the voter registration period ends Oct. 26, the group will shift its focus to educating students on their choices. An important item on the ballot in New York state is Proposal 1, Livingston said.
If the proposal passes, it would amend the state constitution to protect against discrimination based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation and pregnancy.
“We have that power, of the New York people, to be able to say we don’t want that to continue, and we also have the power to say no, if that’s what the New York body wishes,” Livingston said.
The Plattsburgh Votes team’s goal is to raise the voter registration rate at SUNY Plattsburgh to 100%, Livingston said. Almost 73% of SUNY Plattsburgh students were registered to vote in 2022, and 82% in 2020, according to Tufts University’s National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement. Of the students who registered, 68% voted in 2020 and 28% in 2022.
To arrive at these numbers, the study matched the university’s student roster with voter records with the SUNY Plattsburgh’s permission, but does not disclose how students voted.
Livingston, 20, voted for the first time in this election cycle. She said the process was easy.
“It made me feel important, like I was actually enacting that change that I go around preaching for,” Livingston said. “I actually got to do my part.”
Gurung is an international student from Nepal and can’t vote in the United States.
“I wanted to get involved and help others tap into their power and make their voices count,” Gurung wrote in an email response. “I’ve always wanted to learn more about the (American) political process, especially with elections happening every four years. I realized I have to wait another four years to experience it all again, so I wanted to make the most of this opportunity.”
Potts had her political awakening observing her rural hometown during the 2020 election.
“People don’t understand that there are other ways of living, and with that specific election, it really divided people into ‘my way’ versus ‘their way,’” Potts said. “It was a big influence in how I want people to understand that they can make change, and (voting) is one way to do it.”
She is also president of BridgeUSA at Plattsburgh, a club based in discussions across party lines and the only official club dedicated to politics.
The club is hosting a day of events Nov. 5 leading up to the election, including workshops and presentations from campus clubs and organizations and a watch party for the results.
