Pissed off voters' try to reach FSU students

Members of The League of Pissed Off Voters have come to Florida State University and Florida A&M University in an attempt to convince students to pool their voting power together around a common slate of progressive candidates and issues on Election Day.

Organizers of the plan said their ultimate goal is to force elected officials to pay more attention to student voters. One of the best ways to do that, they said, is by having a large group of students pledge to vote in a single bloc for the same candidates and constitutional amendments.

"The idea is that we are building power from a ground-up way," said Mario Yedidia, Florida co-coordinator for The League of Pissed Off Voters. "This is a grassroots movement about maximizing one's vote. It's not a civic duty. We don't do it because a rock star tells us that it's cool to vote. We want to get power through voting, because that's what democracy is about and that's what the League of Pissed Off Voters is about."

Toward that end, meetings were held among student leaders at FSU and FAMU over the weekend in order to discuss and select the slates that each university's participating students will support, and more meetings are scheduled to be held.

Organizers said it is their goal to convince 1,000 students at both FSU and FAMU to endorse their individual slates.

Tallahassee is not the only city where people are considering the concept of bloc-voting. The League of Pissed Off Voters is working in 26 states to create slates that are based on the values of the people in each community that they visit.

Not all of the political races, referendums and constitutional amendments that are on local ballots will necessarily be represented in each slate, because the slate only reflects what each community feels is important to them. The slates are not based on any party affiliation.

Some of the issues and candidates that were discussed at this weekend's meetings were not decided upon with a unanimous vote, so the question of whether everyone would be represented equally came up.

"Democracy is sometimes a little bit about compromise, so I feel really confident that, yes, this reflects the majority of my views," said Jennifer Toth, a graduate student at FSU and a member of Students United for Peace & Justice.

The League of Pissed Off Voters will be having a "Sleep Out to Vote" event on the night of Oct. 17 and the morning of Oct. 18. Organizers hope to have at least 200 students from FSU and FAMU camp out overnight, probably either on the steps of the Old Capitol or Union Green, and then wake up early the next morning and vote on the first day of early voting. Yedidia said that the FSU voting slate is expected to be released at the event, but FAMU's slate is expected to be announced by the end of this week.

The group will also host a concert Oct. 27. Organizers plan to have FSU students meet at noon on Landis Green and march to the Tallahassee-Leon County Civic Center, where they will join with FAMU students before they head over to the Capitol for the concert. The artists for the concert have not yet been announced.

The meeting at FSU was attended by members of a number of different student organizations, but the people who attended came as individuals because registered student organizations and SGA agencies, bureaus and affiliated projects are not allowed to endorse political candidates.

Some organizations that had representatives in attendance were SUPJ, Lambda Theta Phi and the FSU Chapter of Rock the Vote.

"Coming here actually educated me a lot," FSU freshman Erin Wilson said.