Dear Editor:

First off, as someone who was deeply involved in coordinating the voter registration drive that the Student Government Association (SGA) association was a part of, I would like to sincerely apologize to any student who was not able to vote on Election Day.

In addition I would like to thank the dozens of volunteers who worked tirelessly registering students to vote, checking, sorting, and sending forms. The SGA’s voter registration drive registered 1,000 people to vote, and sent out over 300 absentee ballots, this would not have been possible without the work of our amazing volunteers.

For the sake of transparency around the SGA’s voter registration drive I would like to outline the process that the SGA used to register student voters.

The SGA, in coalition with other groups on campus, used classroom announcements, tabling and a voter registration table in the SGA office to collect voter registration forms.

Each form was checked for errors, sorted by location, stamped and sent out no later than the Massachusetts Voter Registration Deadline of Oct. 15. When an incorrect form was discovered we tried to contact the registree.

If a student had put their phone number on the form we called the registree multiple times. If there was no phone number on the form, volunteers looked the students up on ‘People Finder,’ and sent out two rounds of e-mails to ensure that each registree had an opportunity to fix their forms before the Oct. 15 deadline.

Unfortunately in large voter registration drives it is not uncommon for people to occasionally have trouble voting. Once again we extend our most heartfelt apologies to anyone who was not able to vote on Election Day. We make no excuses for the mistakes made and would gladly speak with any concerned student.

Emily Bloch

UMass student