It’s commonplace for election commissions across Middle Tennessee to run voter registration drives in high schools. But Blackman High School in Murfreesboro set itself apart today.
That’s because three students there volunteered with the local election commission to run their school’s drive themselves.
Student-body president Terry Nowell was one of them.
“The reason why we’re doing all this is to inform kids and get kids active in our government, and active in politics, which is something that might otherwise not happen. I know out of the 120 eligible voters we’ll have this year, five or six were registered.”
Nowell says 200 blackman students filled out registration cards today. Half are eligible to vote in November. The rest will have to wait until their 18th birthday to exercise their voting rights.
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The drive concludes a week of election-related events at Blackman. Earlier this week students heard from surrogates of the Obama and McCain presidential campaigns. Yesterday the students held a mock election in which McCain edged out Obama 50 percent to 43 percent, with Ralph Nader cleaning up the difference.
Rutherford County Election Administrator Hooper Penuel says the commission is “tickled and happy” to have the students involved.
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