This past year, 30,532 Jackson County residents were registered to vote.

While that’s a good portion of the county’s 44,013 residents, we’re sure many found themselves unable to vote Nov. 8 because they missed a registration deadline, failed to update their voter registration or just weren’t sure how to register.

National Voter Registration Day, an initiative that began in 2012 for the presidential election, is designed to make sure everyone has the opportunity to vote, a basic right as a citizen of this country.

Besides registering voters, National Voter Registration Day — always the fourth Thursday of September — mobilizes up to 10,000 volunteers; educates millions of voters about the need to register; and gives Americans a chance to unite for at least one day a year, according to the non-partisan National Voter Registration Day.

In 2016, more than 750,000 voters used National Voter Registration Day to register to vote across the country, according to nationalvoterregistrationday.org.

On Tuesday, volunteers and organizations from all over the country will “hit the streets” in a single day of coordinated field, technology and media efforts.

Locally, the Jackson County Public Library and Jackson County Clerk Amanda Lowery are partnering from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday in the lobbyy of the Seymour Library.

The Crothersville Library will have registration forms available from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and the Medora Library will have registration forms available from 2 to 6 p.m.

To register, people must be U.S. citizens, present a driver’s license or state I.D. card, and must be 18 by the next Election Day (Tuesday, May 8, 2018). This is a free service.

Registration also is available at indianavoters.in.gov/PublicSite/OVR/Introduction.aspx?Link=Polling. You also can check your registration at that site.

And there’s plenty of other ways to register including visiting the Jackson County clerk’s office at the courthouse in Brownstown or the Bureau of Motor Vehicles license branch in Seymour. Township trustees also can help register people to vote, according to county Clerk Amanda Lowery.

Lowery is a member of the Indiana Clerks Association’s legislative committee, which is looking at the idea of eliminating a couple of other stumbling blocks for registering to vote. One of those would eliminate the period of time before each election when voter registration is closed in Indiana, while the other would eliminate the seven-day pending period after a person registers to vote.

The addition of more ways to register and technology continues to makes it easier and easier to register to vote.

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indianavoters.in.gov/PublicSite/OVR/Introduction.aspx?Link=Polling

or

nationalvoterregistrationday.org

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Voting is a basic right for Americans, which begins with registering to vote.

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