Since the beginning of the semester, UMD clubs like the College Democrats at the University of Minnesota Duluth and Minnesota Public Interest Research Group (MPIRG) have been encouraging students to hit the polls and cast their votes in this years midterm elections.

“We’ve done voter registration,” College Dems President Brian Muhs said. “We door knocked both on campus, in the dorms and the on campus apartments.”

According to Muhs, the College Dems have also worked on setting up candidate meet and greets.

“We’re just trying to spread the word more generally about our candidates,” Muhs said. “We’ve been tabeling with different literature and different information, trying to have informative meetings where students can learn about the candidates.”

According to MPIRG member Aaron Ashley the group has been recruiting student voters since this fall semesters activities fair in September 2018.

“We’ve been tabeling out in the Kirby Commons area for weeks with voter registrations, trying to encourage students to register,” Ashley said. “Some other members of MPIRG have been going door to door knocking, registering people to vote.”

Ashley stated that if you are not yet registered, but live on campus, you still can vote by registering in the Kirby Ballroom on voting day.

“We have been registering people to vote and just hosted the Civic Engagement fair the other day to get people registered and give them information on where they will be voting,” Ashley said.

According to MPIRG Director Mary Franz, at the beginning of the school year the group went into classrooms and got students registered to vote.

“We got over 1,100 students registered to vote this year,” Franz said.

Franz stated that MPIRG has also reached out to local high schools and the community for voters.

According to Muhs, the College Dems has also done off campus knocks targeting college neighborhoods where students live. Muhs reports that the College Dems have helped register hundreds of voters.

“MPIRG has done door knocks, they did class raps for voter registration, the civic engagement fair, voterpalooza and tabling two times a week for voter registration,” said Franz. “Moving forward [MPIRG] is planning get out the vote week, a voter party the day of in the Rafters and an ask me booth in the garage on November 6th as well.”

According to Ashley, MPIRG has been trying to teach students about different political platforms to inform them on their candidates.

“Voting is important but informed voting is more important,” Ashley said.

The Bark attempted to reach out to the College Republicans but received no response.