Over 9000 students were registered to vote nationally yesterday as part of a voter registration drive run by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), according to the union, though only 450 students were registered in Trinity.
The drive, which follows weeks of voter registration before last May’s marriage equality referendum, came ahead of today’s meeting between USI officers and the Minister for Education and Skills, Jan O’Sullivan.
Referred to as “Rock the Register”, the drive replaced the union’s traditional annual protest.
By the end of next week, USI says it expects to register over 15,000 students, which would be almost half the number of students registered by USI and its member unions in the run up to the marriage equality referendum. The largest proportion of students were registered in UCC, with a figure of over 2000 students. USI had aimed to register 10,000 voters in a 24 hour period.
Speaking to The University Times, President of Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU), Lynn Ruane, said that the union had found that a large cohort of students were already registered to vote. “Due to other things that the union had going on, we weren’t able to concentrate purely on voter registration”, Ruane said. Last night, the union launched its campaign to repeal the eighth amendment, where out of almost 400 people in a lecture hall, only one person said they were not registered to vote.
However, TCDSU is holding a voter registration drive in Trinity Hall next week, which is expected to significantly increase Trinity’s figure. In May, TCDSU said that it had registered around 3,500 students to vote over the course of last year.
Not every third-level institution ran a voter registration drive yesterday. NUIG is the largest university which did not participate. However, a registration drive is organised on campus early next week.
Speaking on the decision to organise a voter registration drive in lieu of a protest, USI President Kevin Donoghue said: “We previously would have done national days of action around marches, demonstrations or rallies whatever. It was kind of felt that in terms of maximising impact, focusing on voter registration as opposed to running a march or other events would be more beneficial in the run up to the general election”.
USI officers will meet the Minister for Education and Skills, Jan O’Sullivan, today, Donoghue told The University Times. Donoghue explained that the focus of the meeting is on ensuring the needs of students are addressed in Labour’s general election manifesto and on maximising the implementation of USI’s pre-budget submission in the upcoming budget.
“There will be kind of two areas of focus tomorrow. One is around the pre-budget submission that is one aspect of it, and the other is around the general election manifesto for Labour – so what they are going to put in it from the perspective of students”, he said.
