Voterpalooza at U of M seeks to encourage student voting

MINNEAPOLIS — Students at the University of Minnesota are getting ready to row the vote. 
Voterpalooza will take place at Weisman Art Museum all day on Tuesday. It’s going to be a celebration of early voting on campus. The goal is to get as many students registered and voting as possible.
It’s the first time Minnesota college students will get to vote early on campus, following a law passed in 2023 by the state legislature allowing on-campus pop-up early voting sites. 
But even if students are not ready to cast their ballots, they can always register to vote. Organizers expect more than 9,000 students to do so. 
This is a nonpartisan campaign hosted by the university’s Undergraduate Student Government. They’ve spent the last few weeks preparing, speaking to 1,000 classes, educating their peers on how to vote and helping them register. 
Organizers say as a result, 12,000 students have made a plan to vote and 2,000 have registered to vote already.
The event starts at 10 a.m. and goes until 5 p.m. At 11:15 a.m., Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon will present students and university officials with the Democracy Cup for having the highest voting rate in 2022. 
A day before Voterpalooza, 11 people were arrested when protesters stormed Morrill Hall at the university. The protest was organized by the group UMN Students for a Democratic Society, which is calling on the university to divest from companies that support Israel. The Board of Regents declined to do so in August following weeks of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus.