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Tuesday deemed National Voter Registration Day

By Tenikka Smith
By Tenikka Smith

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — There is a nationwide non-partisan push to register people to vote.

Tuesday is the first National Voter Registration Day.  It is a day designated for volunteers, celebrities and organizations all over the country to make a coordinated effort to register people to vote.

According to the U.S. Census, in 2008, six million Americans did not vote because they did not know how to register or missed their state’s voter registration deadline.

"This timing, the end of September, is excellent,” said Linda Levy with the League of Women Voters of Charlotte-Mecklenburg.

It is just enough time for people to get registered to participate in the November election.  Mecklenburg County Elections Director Michael Dickerson said the political energy in North Carolina is also driving more people to register.

“With the Democratic National Convention coming to town and with North Carolina being a sort of a toss-up or swing state, you see a lot more people get interested in election process here,” he said.

Eyewitness News stopped by a drive at CPCC's Harper Campus, where Levy gave out election information and registration forms to students like Jontavis Stacey. The 27-year-old said he passed on the opportunity to vote in years past, but said he wanted to have his say this time around, especially in the race for president.

"If we don't have the right leader, everything is going to look bad for us.  I'm doing it for my family and my friends. That's really why I'm doing it,” Stacey said.

This will be the first election in which Katherine Herrera is able to vote for president, which is also a big part of why she grabbed a voter registration form Tuesday.

"It's my first election because I just turned 19, so I didn't really know the process of it, but I'm glad I found out right now,” she said.

The deadline to submit voter registration in time to participate in the November general election is Oct. 6 in South Carolina and Oct. 12 in North Carolina.

For more information, click here.

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