There is great news to kick off this website and newsletter debut: TurboVote is coming to the Florida College System this fall – just in time for the 2014 elections! TurboVote is a non-partisan, non-profit digital platform that makes voter registration – and voting – easy for students, especially incoming freshmen with no previous voting experience and little if any knowledge of or interest in civic affairs as they enter college for the first time. Because higher education is required by amendments to the Higher Education Act to make a good-faith effort to distribute voter registration forms to each enrolled student, an online service like TurboVote makes it relatively simple for the 28 colleges in FCS to fulfill that mandate.

And more great news: Participation in TurboVote will be offered free to participating members of the Florida College System. Normally, there is a $1,000 per college fee up-front to cover TurboVote’s services, plus a charge of $1.17 per student who registers to vote. This fee covers cost of postage to mail absentee ballots.

However, TurboVote has offered FCS a package deal: a 50 % discount for enrolling the entire system. The FCS Council of Presidents has accepted the offer. Thus a $28,000 up-front enrollment fee of $1,000 each for 28 colleges was reduced to $14,000. And that was reduced to zero when this Institute agreed to cover this cost as part of its statewide mission. At the same time, TurboVote agreed to use part of its grant from the Knight Foundation to cover the postage costs.

So, TurboVote is available to all 28 colleges in the FCS at no cost! We are rolling out this project as we speak, so continue to watch this space for updates and click here to read more about it.

David Klement, Executive Director
Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions