Tuesday is National Voter Registration Day, a time aimed at registering citizens to vote in the upcoming November 4 election.
In Bowling Green, Kimberly Adkins manned a voter registration table on the WKU campus. The senior political science major is immersed in politics, but realizes many fellow students are not.
"They feel like their voice doesn't matter and their vote doesn't count," said Adkins. "A lot of young people are tired of the partisan bickering and they just tune it out."
Freshman Leslie Brown will vote for the first time in a national election this November. She hasn't followed Kentucky's U.S. Senate race, and admitted not knowing the names of the candidates.
"I have no idea," she laughed.
Brown said she planned to study up before November 4.
"As young people we need to vote and we need to have a voice because that's the only way it's ever going to get heard is if we vote," Brown added.
There are approximately 670,000 youth in Kentucky, ages 18-29. While jobs and student loan debt weigh heavily on the minds of college students, most will stay home November 4 if history is any indicator. Young people made up just 13% of overall voters in Kentucky during the 2010 mid-term election, according to the National Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement based at Tufts University.
October 6 is the deadline in Kentucky to register to vote in the fall election. As of September 15, Kentucky had a total of 3,120,990 registered voters. Democrats outnumbered Republicans by more than 460,000.
