With one-third of their state’s eligible voters still unregistered, according to WSPA News Channel 7, South Carolinians are steering efforts toward getting one group specifically to the polls: teachers.
Former state Teacher of the Year, Tracy Young Cooper, asks “How can we sit by and neglect our civic duty when we stand in front of South Carolina’s most impressionable citizens, our students, each and every day and work with them to instill the values of democracy?”
Earlier this week, the advocate group RISE SC (Reform, Improve, Support, Public Education) launched Goal: 100%, an incentive plan to increase voter registration among educators. Schools that participate in the program and get 100 percent of their certified staff registered to vote in the 2008 general election will be entered into a drawing to win $1,000 for their school. Ten schools will receive prize money, which comes from private donations.
State superintendent Jim Rex stresses that the effort is non-partisan. “I won the statewide election for state superintendent of education by a total of 455 votes out of 1.1 million,” Rex said, “so every vote really does count. And it’s never been more true than this upcoming election.”