LEWISTON – Young people need to organize to make sure education is affordable and accessible to everyone, a Bates College student said Wednesday.

That is why they need to register to vote, then show up at the polls.

Alec Maybarduk was speaking at Lewiston-Auburn College at the formal kickoff of the New Voters Project, a national nonpartisan effort to register more people aged 18-24.

The group hopes to register 5,000 new young Maine voters and plans to follow up by offering them the help they need to cast their ballots on Election Day. The group expects to have a presence at most Maine colleges and universities this fall.

Maybarduk, a local resident who is starting his senior year at the private college, said rapidly rising tuition should be cause for concern for all college students.

“Just since I started at Bates three years ago, I have seen my own tuition increase thousands of dollars,” he said.

Other important issues also affect college-age students, he said.

Many have no health insurance or are underinsured because they often lack the needed income or have jobs with the types of employers who provide coverage, he said. Often, kids his age are jobless with little or no work experience.

Foreign affairs also are important, he said.

“It is my generation who are the greatest suppliers of troops in Iraq. We need to be organized so that we can decide whether a war is worth the death of our friends and peers.”

Only by voting are people his age likely to get the ear of candidates to listen to their concerns, Maybarduk said.

“The interests of young people are often overlooked by the campaign agendas of our elected representatives, yet, as we can see, my peers are some of the greatest stakeholders in the policies that they implement,” he said.

About a dozen business and political leaders from the community spoke during the morning event. Similar press conferences were held in Maine’s larger cities Wednesday.

Sen. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston, said one of her missions as a legislator has been to connect young people to their government.

Reaching voting age should be celebrated the way it once was, she said.

Inspired by a story from an elderly woman who told Rotundo that her mill worker father had bought her a corsage to wear when she first voted, Rotundo said she treated her son to lunch after accompanying him to City Hall when he registered to vote.


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