Carbondale’s NAACP helps SIU students on National Voter Registration Day

CARBONDALE, Ill. (KBSI) – Carbondale’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was at Southern Illinois University (SIU) for National Voter Registration Day to sign up as many people as possible for the November 8 election.  

Carbondale NAACP President Dr. Linda Flowers says her organization just wants citizens to know how important voting is.  

“It’s commemorating and doing voter registration drives just to drive home the fact that our voting rights are important,” said Flowers. 

Along with registering to vote, this voting drive gave Dr. Flowers an opportunity to educate others on questions that they had about voting.  

“State of Illinois, as long as you’re going to be 18 by Election Day, you can still register and vote, “Flowers said “Voting is the right in America that opens the door for all other rights, and it also closes the door for all other rights as we saw with the recent Supreme Court decision to ban Roe V wade.” 

According to How to.Vote, to register in Illinois, you must: 

• Be a citizen of the United States. 
• Be a resident of Illinois and of your election precinct at least 30 days before the ensuing election. 
• Cannot serve a sentence of confinement in any penal institution because of a conviction of any crime. 
• Not claim the right to vote anywhere else. 

Spreading the awareness early is important to many, including SIU Carbondale NAACP Vice President Jeremiah Denham, a student at SIU looking to register his peers.   

“It’s really important to register to vote as a young people, especially African Americans, because we didn’t have that right before so having that right it is very important to do,” said Denham.  

The message of the Carbondale NAACP and the importance of national voter registration is to remind people their vote matters.