Debunking Voting Myths | Rebecka Miller | TEDxNMU
there's actually nothing in the constitution that guarantees our right to vote and if you're surprised I was really surprised as a political science student and a political activist and someone who's a registered thousands of students on campus they were surprised too the more I talked to people the more I talked to people the more I realized no one had any idea about the voting process and most people had a lot of you know kind of weird ideas about voting and they wouldn't vote for certain reasons and there were a lot of laws in place that would make it hard for them to vote so I decided to see the government and I guess it worked cuz the law did change and so one of the laws we seek to change was Rogers law so that's the law that your driver's license must exactly match your voter registration form so say for example you have a hyphen in your name and one underpaid overworked DMV employee forgets to mention that - when you register to vote then your voter registration might just be thrown out and you might not find this out until Election Day when you're at the polls and someone's turning you away and another big barrier I found a voting was the first time in person voter requirement and if you're a college student you've probably run into this one so anyone under the age of 60 has to register in person the first time they vote which is really hard for a lot of students who turn 18 around there who turn 18 and then move away so the u.s. population is 325 point 7 million and out of those people 245 point five million are registered to vote or eligible to vote and only 150 seven point six are registered to vote and Michigan is one of the states were the lowest voting turnout rates of is the state with the lowest voting turnout rates and this could be because there's those laws in place and there's a lot of myths going around so as I was registering people one thing that was told to me a lot was my vote doesn't even matter and in fact there's been a dozen races in the last 20 years that have been decided by a tie or one by a single vote so one of my favorite examples is in an Alaskan state house race was won by four votes out of ten thousand and then in 2016 a New Mexico State House race was won by two votes out of almost 14,000 and then even crazier in Vermont a State House race was won by one vote out of two thousand and that was a rematch and in the second time when they faced each other he won by one vote in the other direction and then another one I would hear a lot if I registered a vote in my college town I will lose my health insurance and your health insurance isn't tied in any way to your voter registration another one students brought up a lot because I'm worried I'll lose my financial aid and as long as you don't feel out of calculus registering to vote you will not lose your financial aid if I can't make it to the polls on Election Day I can't vote so in Michigan that was hard if you were a student so to get around the first time in person vote requirement before the law which will be enacted in about a month there was a big law change you could request your absentee ballot in person but now that the lachchi there's no reason absentee voting so you can request an absentee voting for any reason at any time so how's a student you don't need to vote in person anymore so if I register to vote I'll have to serve jury duty people hate Jerry duty and they will not register to vote because they do not want to be called for it so unfortunately if you have a driver's license you pay taxes or you're an American citizen you're just as likely to be called for jury duty than registering to vote if I don't register to vote I can't be drafted into the military I don't know where you got this but if you're 18 years or older and a male then you have to register for his elective service I'm sorry I can't register to vote because I don't have an ID for the state that I live in so say you're moving to a new state one way to kind of get around this is what I would do is use your last four digits of your social security number to register to vote and kind of register early and register often my right to vote is guaranteed by the Constitution it's not guaranteed by the Constitution and in fact it wasn't mentioned until almost a hundred years after ratification with the First Amendment being the 14th amendment which would prohibit racial discrimination but still then give people the right to vote 42 years later and the 19th amendment was introduced which would give women the right to vote but it still wasn't like a thing it didn't include everyone so your right to vote isn't guaranteed it's too late to register to vote um in Michigan ballot three just passed I don't know if you heard about that proposal three on the ballot so that made it so you had to register 30 days out before an election but that's all changed so now you can register up till Election Day so that's pretty big news so it's never too late to register to vote and if you guys are interested I can register you now or if you have any questions yeah feel free to ask me I've registered just about 21,000 people so yeah I'm a little bit of an expert I really know how to fill out the form so if you have any questions feel free to vote and vote often thank you [Applause]