New app encourages voting through smart-phones

Aubrey Marks, a UCF Political Science student, was recently featured in an article about an app that encourages voting through smart-phones.

A new app gives people the ability to contact the Supervisor of Elections’ office for their county, no matter where they live in Florida, to check and update their voter registration status.

Florida citizens can download the Microsoft Tag application from their provider’s application service and scan the tag. Voters can enter their county of residence and choose among the options to connect with their county’s Supervisor of Elections office either by phone, email or in person.

Almost every day, the UCF College Democrats can be found near the library helping students register to vote and pressing the issues with their trademark ironing board. Recently elected College Democrats President Aubrey Marks is excited by the new tool.

“I think it could really benefit students because first of all, a lot of people don’t know or they don’t think to update their address,” Marks said. “A lot of times when people are registering voters, they’ll ask a potential person ‘Are you registered to vote in your current address?’ and they’ll go ‘Oh no!’ Sometimes the last time someone registered was before they graduated high school.”

Freshman biology major Mary Figueroa understands the importance of students voting and has been registered since she’s been able to. However, Figueroa faces a challenge similar to most students. She is registered in her home county.

“As students, we’re all from different counties and we’re not in our right county,” Figueroa said. “Since I’m from Polk County I’m not going to drive two hours to vote. If I’m here during elections then I’ll just use that tag and that’ll be a loteasier.”

You can read the full article here.