New Award Announced For High Schools Registering Students To Vote

The Putnam County Election Commission is pushing to get high school students registered to vote with a new voter registration award.

Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett has launched the Anne Dallas Dudley Award for individual high schools. Putnam County Elections Administrator Michele Honeycutt said registering 85 percent to 100 percent of eligible seniors will earn schools the recognition.

“Every vote makes a difference and that’s what we tell them when we go over there,” Honeycutt said. “It’s a sad thing, a lot of times the younger kids are not that interested in it. So we’re hoping the government teachers will push this and let them know how important it is.”

Honeycutt said the election commission is already working to schedule registration drives with each high school during the month of September. Honeycutt said that students will be encouraged to register online as well.

She said the deadline for schools to submit their award applications is March 31, 2022 so everyone is registered by the next election in May.

“They’ll (Schools) will keep a log of what students are doing it in front of them, so it is in-person,” Honeycutt said. “Then they’ll give us the log, so that when we pull them off the online voter registration site, at that point we make them an in-person registration. Which means, if they do go away to college out of the county, they are still able to request an absentee ballot to be mailed to them.”

Students only need to be 18 by the time the May election comes. The award is named after suffragist Anne Dallas Dudley who helped lead the effort to get the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ratified in Tennessee.