In the fall of 2006, the UW Oshkosh American Democracy Project took part in a nationwide voter registration project which aimed to register 40,000 students on more than 80 participant campuses.  The goal was to register as many students as we could while trying to uncover which registration techniques worked best.  We exceeded our quota on campus and together with the New Voter's Project a total of nearly 1300 students were registered on campus.

During the course of this project presentations were given on dorm floors and in over 60 classes by eight interns and myself.  Interns also staffed a table in Reeve Union every weekday from 10-4 from late September to mid-October.  Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Petra Roter and OSA President Amanda Cone sent out emails to all of our students urging them to register and vote, as did a mass mailing targeting over 5000 students.

All this effort helped to increase voter turnout significantly.  We had nearly 700 more students vote at Albee in 2006 than in 2002 (1767 versus 1100) and more than doubled the total of 800 from 1998.

Thanks to the combined efforts of the Administration, student interns, and publicity director Frank Church, the effort to register voters gained a good deal of attention from local newspapers and radio stations and also garnered a $1000 award from Young Voter's Strategies.

The events we organized were attended by nearly 500 people. Additionally several of the events were filmed by Titan TV and shown several times before the election as a public service:

         -forum on the Death Penalty Referendum, featuring Dr. David Jones (Criminal Justice),

          Dr. Susan Reed (Criminal Justice), Mike Balskus (Assistant District Attorney

          for Winnebago County), and Dr. Martin Gruberg (Political Science/ACLU activist)

-forum on the Marriage Amendment, featuring Dan Hoyt, campus adviser to Conservatives in Action, Ron Hardy (campus adviser to Rainbow Alliance for HOPE), Tom Young, J.D. (family law practitioner from the Oshkosh firm of Young, Schuster and Maslowski), Dr. Druscilla Scribner (Political Science), co-sponsored with the Women's Center.

-debate between 54th State Assembly candidates Julie Pung Leschke (R) and Gordon Hintz (D),moderated by Dr. Jim Simmons (Political Science)

 -Political Science roundtable on election issues, featuring Dr. Paul Liu, Dr. David Siemers, and Dr. Jim Simmons (all of Political Science) and Dr. Craig Maher (Public Affairs)

-Political Science roundtable on election results, featuring Dr. Martin Gruberg, Dr. Paul Liu,Dr. Jim Canfield, and Dr. Jim Simmons (all from Political Science)