The Miami University College Democrats brought in Representative Dani Isaacsohn on Oct. 16 to talk with them about the upcoming election.
Despite being held at the same time as the JANUS Forum, the meeting still had a strong turnout. Patrick Houlihan, president of the College Democrats of Ohio, president of the College Democrats at Miami University and Northwest Regional Chair of the Butler County Democratic party, started the meeting by sharing statistics about the upcoming election, door knocking and canvassing.
“Because [the election is] so close, every door knocked, every person talked to really matters,” Houlihan said.
Houlihan emphasized the importance of volunteering to hand out slate cards at polling locations. He said this is important because voters don’t always fill out the entire ballot and stop after the candidates most important to them.
Houlihan said he was able to work to modify the rules involving literature dropping and door-knocking in on-campus residences. Before, the university required people to physically knock on the doors, but Houlihan pushed for them to be allowed to slide flyers directly under doors without knocking.
At 7:41 p.m., the College Democrats were joined by Isaacsohn. An Ohio State Representative from District 24, he also serves as Minority Whip in the Ohio House of Representatives. During his speech, Isaacsohn focused on the importance of young people voting.
“I spend a lot of time on campuses these days because Ohio has a problem,” Isaacsohn said, “and our problem is that when you look at Ohio compared to Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, our voting numbers are way out of wack.”
Isaacsohn then said the majority of issues regarding voter turnout deal with young people, but this also gives him hope because it doesn’t mean Ohio is not democratic, it means that fewer young people are registered to vote.
Isaacsohn added that he got into politics in postgraduate school, joined the Obama campaign in 2012 and got to where he is currently in politics, serving the Cincinnati area.
He spent a lot of time talking about education-related issues, while also asking the students in attendance to give feedback on how they felt the Democratic party was doing and any advice on how to get students out to vote.
Connor Wike, a sophomore political science and philosophy major, said he showed up to the meeting after attending the JANUS Forum earlier that evening. He said he enjoyed getting to see more behind the scenes at a more local level, rather than nationally.
“I really liked hearing from an inside perspective on the representatives in Ohio,” Wike said. “Getting more of an intricate look on the inner politics of the state is really interesting to me.”
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