2016 election results, cupcakes motivate national voter registration day

They were distributing free chocolate cakes to anyone who registered to vote on Monday at Pier 39 in San Francisco, but that's not why Christine Libbey signed up.

"After what happened in 2016, many people like me woke up," she said. "I take this thing a lot more seriously now."

Libbey, a 25-year-old doctoral student in psychology at the Allied International University on Beach Street, has stopped at the school library reception and has taken the form from her school. ;registration. And the cupcake.

She was writing her doctorate thesis on the subject of assisted suicide, which is something like what the 2016 election results felt like.

"I understand what's at stake," she said. "I left it last time. I'm trying to be optimistic about the future. "

Libbey, who said she missed the 2016 election, but would not miss the next, was one of tens of thousands of new voters who would have stopped at more than 4,000 national day. voter registration.

The cupcakes were the brainchild of Allied librarian Dean Jones, who called his civic duty to involve students and have them vote, even if it meant paying three dozen cupcakes out of his pocket. It's the cost of encouraging democracy this week.

"It's not a big deal," said Jones. "But you do not get a cupcake unless you sign up. If I gave everyone a cupcake, we would be short.

The National Voters Registration Day, which takes place every four Tuesday in September, is usually forgotten every fourth Wednesday of September. Not this year, said the organizers, although the goal has always been participation in party preferences.

"We are not partisans; We think this one day can make everyone aware, "said Brian Miller, director of the National Voter Registration Day, a non-profit foundation based in Virginia. "We think democracy works best when more people vote."

Every year, Miller said, millions of Americans did not vote because they missed the registration deadline, did not update their registration, or did not know how 'register. On Tuesday, volunteers held booths, rang the bell, dialed phone numbers and walked the streets to make sure no one had an excuse on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

In 2016, according to Miller, about 750,000 voters used National Voter Registration Day to qualify to vote in all 50 states. In the Bay Area, voter registration events were also held at AT & T Park, the South San Francisco, Millbrae, Alameda and San Bruno Libraries, as well as at Sharp Park Golf Club in Pacifica, where golfers always try to correct their mistakes.