Thirty-five University of Texas Permian Basin Honor Students were sworn in Tuesday as Deputy Voter Registrars.
By completing Deputy Voter Registrar training, the students will be entrusted with officially registering voters.
They were sworn in by Amanda Snyder, bilingual coordinator at the Ector County Elections Office. Snyder said she would be at Permian High School Friday to register people to vote.
Freshman Trinity Anderson, 18, said this will hopefully help more young people get into politics, start voting and making decisions for the nation.
“I can see that not many people vote (that are) our age and I think it’s making America decline in a way. We have important decisions that we need to make and we’re the next ones stepping up,” Anderson said.
She added that she thinks everyone’s nervous to see how the election will play out, but they’re excited to try and help everyone come together as one and vote.
“I feel like if we get more young people to vote, there wouldn’t be as many problems like saying elections are rigged because they’re just having voters from one demographic instead of everybody,” Anderson said.
She added that she’s kind of nervous about asking people to register, but she’ll be fine.
“I’ll just go up straightforward and say it. I think everyone needs to vote because this is our America and it’s our decision,” Anderson said.
Isabel Franco, a 24-year-old freshman, said she is “absolutely enthused” about this opportunity.
“I believe that this is going to be a very, very good chance to help involve the working class in the election more because I feel like their opinion matters the most because they make up the biggest segment of the population and yet because they have less accessibility to the elections and stuff they tend to have their voices unheard so I’m hoping this opportunity will help me bring some outreach to them and help them and help get them in local politics as well,” Franco said.
Carlie Buck, an 18-year-old freshman, agreed with Anderson.
“You want to be able to make a difference and be able to say oh yeah, I started at a younger age and I was involved in wanting to be part of something bigger because not very many people do it right now. It needs to be a change and I think that’s what mainly pushed me is because I wanted to see a change,” Buck said.
Snyder said the deputy registrars are a big help because they can register people at their schools or their church.
“They can really help us with our numbers (and) get more people involved. And with them being young and they see young people doing it, I just feel like it makes more of an (impact),” Snyder said.
She added that younger people might not listen to her because she’s older.
“They’re a great help,” Snyder said.
UTPB Associate Professor of Art and Bob Perry, associate professor of political science, are the honor students’ instructors.
“The project started because of a conversation with (Rep.) Brooks Landgraf about how to engage the students in their community, but also in the electoral process,” Stanley said. “Then it had an intersection with a change in the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board where we now have to do these teamwork projects, or group work projects. We could do them in the context of just the school, or we could actually get the kids out into the community in these teams which we’ll be forming to do this good work.”
Snyder said she has been working with Stanley for six years.
Stanley said this gives students a better understanding of the way the system works.
