If you haven’t heard yet – guess what?  Today is National Voter Registration Day!

We librarians have compiled some useful information about the 2012 election on our  Vote 2012 guide – please feel free to check it out!  In the meantime, here are some highlights:

Are you registered yet?  Click here to register! 

For college students, it’s oftentimes confusing to determine where and how to register to vote.  But don’t let that stop you!  There are a lot of instructions out there, but it all boils down to this: as a student, you have a constitutional right to register and vote in the place you truly consider to be “home” — whether that’s your parents’ house, your apartment, or your dorm room.

Before you make the important decision about where to vote, make sure you know the rules (and sometimes consequences) of registering to vote in that state.  Here are the rules and regulations for student voting in Minnesota.  You can find information about other states here, or stop by the library TODAY to get registered!

10:00 AM – 2:00 PM & 6:00 – 8:00 PM

@ the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library

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Now that you’re registered…

Have you started thinking about whom you’d like to vote for?  In Presidential election years, sometimes that can get overwhelming, too, with so many candidates, platforms, and simply the larger number of races going on than in other years.

Luckily for us, there are some great resources out there to help people focus more on the issues than whatever commercial is currently airing. One resource that I particularly like is Minnesota Public Radio’s Select A Candidate feature.

 As MPR describes it,

“By answering a series of questions about major issues, you can quickly learn which candidates are most closely aligned with your views. You’ll be able to learn more about each candidate and find out how your results compare with those of others who take the survey.”

Remember to check out our Vote 2012 guide for more information!

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FAQs about Select A Candidate  (from MPR’s website):

Q: Does Select A Candidate tell me who to vote for?

A: Absolutely not. Its main purpose is to introduce you to the candidates who are running and their positions on the issues.

Q: How did you come up with these questions?

A: The questions mirror the campaign. There might be issues we are interested in that haven’t come up in the campaign so far, and those aren’t listed here. Should they come up — and we have a mechanism for your interests to be part of the campaign — they will be added to Select A Candidate. The choices from each question mirror positions that candidates have stated. If no answer is close to your position, do not answer the question, for there is no candidate with that position.

Q: How does the scoring work?

A: Each candidate gets 1 point for each question that matches your answer. If you indicate that an issue is very important to you, the candidate gets 3 points. If you indicate that the issue is of no importance to you, the candidate gets 0 points. In this way, the “match” is weighted to reflect those issues on which you decide elections.