DON'T TELL MARCIA NOE THAT YOU'RE NOT VOTING BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT POLITICAL. SHE AIN'T BUYIN' IT. “You're political because you're living and breathing in this world. If you don't vote, that's a political position. It has political consequences.” For the past four years, Noe, director of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, has been leading a charge to convince anyone on campus that voting is not just a right, it's a necessity. On National Voter Registration Day, the fourth Tuesday in September, she and a group of students set up a table in Heritage Plaza on campus to get as many students as they could to register to vote.
“We don't advocate people registering as Democrats, Republicans, Green party, whatever, but we're thinking over the long term,” Noe says. “These students here are going to be voting for 40, 50, 60 more years. Maybe some more than that. “The parties are going to change. The candidates are going to change. The issues are going to change, but registering to vote is a first step to becoming an active participating citizen.”
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Voter registration on the UTC campus calls attention to the importance of voting because students tend to respond to other students, says Sharon Alexander, president of the Chattanooga chapter of the League of Women Voters. “The students make a big difference. They're out there, waving to their friends, waving the signs that say, 'Register to vote here' and talking it up to their friends. Enthusiastic students can make a huge difference to get people over, talk them into registering.” For some students, especially those who come to UTC from other cities, registering to vote can seem complicated. Register in your home county or register in Hamilton County? You can do either. Vote in your home county or vote absentee from Hamilton County? You can do either. But if you live elsewhere and register here, is your ID certified by Hamilton County? If you want to stay here and vote absentee for your home county, have you made sure you've mailed your request for an absentee ballot in time for it to be returned before Election Day? “It might be kind of daunting to somebody who's never done it,” Noe says. “If they're registered here, they don't really know the local candidates. If they register at home, then they have to take a day and go home to vote unless they register absentee, which is not the easiest process in the world.
