Voter Guide: Home

This guide is intended to clarify the registration process and help you learn how to get involved and make your vote count. And remember: the deadline to register to vote for the upcoming election in Pennsylvania is May 1st, so if you haven't already registered, please do so as soon as possible. You can get started here.         .

Need another reason to vote? Look at how underrepresented your age bracket has been for over thirty years of voting!

We are having a national poll worker shortage problem. And Pennsylvania is no exception. This can cause major problems, including having polling locations being consolidated, which could cause longer lines, not to mention people having to travel greater distances to vote. The pandemic has contributed in major ways as well: health concerns for older individuals who may have normally been interested in volunteering to be poll workers, fears around voting in person increased by the possibility of overcrowding, proper spacing, PPE, etc. We need all hands on deck on this. Perhaps some of those hands are yours!

Law students are uniquely situated to be of serious significance to help out for reasons well-stated in this article, but we'd like to emphasize a main point here:

"Law students are in a particularly strong position to offer assistance as election workers because the analytical skills taught in law schools can be particularly helpful when difficult voter questions arise concerning provisional ballots or other complex procedures."

Did you know that Kline law students can receive pro bono credit for working at the polls on election day?

Students who wish to receive pro bono credit for their work as poll workers must:

1. Sign up to be a poll worker.
2. File their project registration form with Rashida West, Kline’s director of pro bono and public interest programs, as soon as possible.
3. Track their hours using the student timesheet.
4. Donate their compensation to the Public Interest Experience Auction (details on this requirement are forthcoming). Because of school policies, all compensation received from poll working and related trainings must be donated to the Public Interest Experience Auction in order to receive pro bono credit. Students who do not wish to donate are still encouraged to volunteer as poll workers but cannot receive pro bono hours.

All students who are selected by their counties to be poll workers will receive training from experts at the Voter Project as well as their county. Poll workers will also be provided with personal protective equipment.

See here for details: https://drexel.edu/law/about/news/articles/overview/2020/September/pro-bono-election-day-polls/

Thanks to Robert Irving, Yolanda D. Ingram, David S. Cohen, Amy Boss, Donna Gerson, Anil Kalhan, Sara Kulp, Analisa Goodmann, Brian Crooks, Emily Zimmerman, Rashida T. West, and Becka Rich.

Here's what some of the law faculty and staff have to say on the subject of voting:

"Forty-plus years in the making. My husband can finally vote!" - Professor Amy Boss

"Vote. Make your voice heard.   For every person (including my great grandmother) who fought for the right to vote."  - Donna Gerson

David Haendler, Research & Instructional Services Librarian

dmh397@drexel.edu

phone: 215-571-4776

Lindsay Steussy, Research and Instructional Services Librarian

lhs27@drexel.edu

phone: 215-571-4774