A group of Kutztown University students and faculty held a March to the Maxatawny Poll on Election Day.
Their goal is to bring back the polling location to campus. Last year the poll was moved to the Maxatawny Township Building.
“We’re doing a march,” said KU Student Government President Joe Scoboria, 20, from Reading, a junior education major. “We’re doing this to demonstrate how this is voter suppression toward college students.”
Scoboria said a lot of college students don’t have a car available. He noted that the voting poll was located at Keystone Hall on campus for many years.
Auditor General Eugene DePasquale released to media a statement, “Last year – after the polling place for the third district from Kutztown University to the Maxatawny Township municipal building – I urged an all-out effort to inform voters of this change in polling location. Kutztown students have certainly stepped up to the mark this election season and are doing their part to encourage voting on Nov. 4. By organizing a five-mile march to the polls and arranging bus transportation, the students of Kutztown University are helping to ensure that registered voters in the university community who want to vote are able to do so. I applaud their efforts to improve voter access.”
Before setting off from Keystone Hall, Scoboria said the reason they took the Main Street to Route 222 to Quarry Road was to show how unsafe the route is. “It’s not accessible. We hope they reconsider their vote.”
Taking about an hour, the dozen or so KU students, faculty, union members, administration and Kutztown University Media students marched about 4.5 miles.
“Our main goal is that the Commissioners who voted to move the poll reconsider their vote and listen to the students. When it comes down to it, this is our voting poll. It’s a great inconvenience for students so we wish to bring the poll back to campus,” said Scoboria, whose long-term personal goals are to become a teacher and obtain a graduate degree in education administration and maybe one day run for office.
“Our most precious freedom I feel we have is voting in general,” said Scoboria. “There’s six amendments to the Constitution that have to deal with voting and there’s zero voting polls on our campus. The one thing that really got my attention was in the summer of 2013 when they moved the poll, they did it when campus was empty, there were no students here to question that.”
Scoboria explained that based on his research there are five higher education institutions in Berks County. KU is the largest and is the only one without a poll on campus. There are about 4,500 students on campus.
“The more research I did the more sense it gave me to bring it back home,” he said.
The Student Government Board was unable to make any changes before this election but Student Government did hold a voter registration event with more than 300 students registering to vote on that day alone and hundreds more since then, he said. Also, working with the KU APSCUF faculty union, they arranged school buses to transport students from campus to the poll at the Maxatawny Twp. Building on Election Day.
Student Government Board member Christopher Dewalt, 20, from Lancaster County, a junior political science and psychology major, hopes people see that “we’re trying to say we that have a voice. Just because they moved the polling place doesn’t mean that we’re going to stop talking.”
Looking at the density of the population, he said, “It’s ridiculous to ask of so many people to walk or to go that far out of their way. When right here, we have 4,500 students that would have been able to vote here on campus.”
Dewalt estimated one hour to walk to the poll and one hour to walk back. “Luckily, we got the buses, but if they don’t have any other means of transportation besides walking its just an absolutely ridiculous task to ask of young voters. It’s such an inconvenience. Our voice won’t be stopped but it definitely will be weaker.”
KU English Professor Kevin Mahoney, also chair of the public relations committee for the KU APSCUF faculty union, walked in the March to the Poll. “I’m here to support the students who are trying to get their poll back to the campus.”
“Your right to vote is the foundational right of our democracy,” said Mahoney. “For me, anything that interferes anyone’s access to the polling place and access to the ballot is a problem. In my mind there have been some inadequate explanations about why the polling place was moved… At the very least there’s reason to be concerned that what we’re seeing here is part of a trend we’ve seen nationally where polls are moved away from college campuses in order to suppress the vote of new voters, college students and the like.”
Mahoney said while Student Government was not able to get the poll moved back to campus in time for this election, he said, “this is not just about this election. This is about access to the ballot box. This is a way on Election Day to draw attention to the students’ access to the ballot box. And I can’t think of a better way of demonstrating … this is what it looks like to walk to the polling place.”
After arriving at the Maxatawny Township Building on Quarry Road about an hour later, Scoboria said, “We got a lot of beeps… We did a lot of hard work leading up to today. Now we’re going to wait for feedback.”
He said their next step will be reaching out to the County Commissioners to find a compromise and come up with a solution.
“There is an obvious problem here and I think we can compromise and work together. Right now we’re facing a hard time getting to the poll. Hopefully they’ll reconsider their vote,” said Scoboria.
