Interesting Greensboro News & Record headline on NextGen America’s parachute mission onto the UNCG campus to register young voters:
Unlocking the power: National group turns to N.C. in hopes of signing up — and turning out — young voters
NextGen America is a liberal advocacy group funded by —wait for it—an old rich white man. (But he’s a cool old rich white man.) NextGen North Carolina director Josette Ferguson told the N&R it had beat its goal of registering more than 5,000 young people at 16 college campuses in North Carolina. That’s a lot of “swag”:
Ferguson said NextGen used a lot of free food — mostly pizza, cupcakes and doughnuts — T-shirts and other swag and even free haircuts to entice young people to come talk to NextGen organizers. The group did major signup pushes just as students arrived on campus in August and on National Voter Registration Day on Sept. 25. The goal was to do one event at each campus every day, whether it was something big with music and giveaways or something as small as a college student with a clipboard.
If that’s not enough, NextGen organizers “planned to drive students to the polls during the early voting period and all day on Election Day.” Ferguson added “we want to make students know that voting is something cool and fun,” Ferguson said. “We want people to be, You didn’t get into the van (to go vote)? You missed out on something.”
