Voter drive boosts registration at USC

One day more than tripled the number of voters living at the University of South Carolina.

A push by the student-led group Lead the Way signed up 2,306 new voters on National Voter Registration Day. The group says that number represents two-thirds of the number registered since the beginning of the school year.

“Our executive director set a goal of 2,000, because we thought that would be the highest number we might be able to get,” said Kathryn Stoudemire, Lead the Way’s marketing director and herself a USC sophomore.

In all, the group has managed to register 3,541 new voters in Richland County, the large majority of them students.

More than a hundred students volunteered for the daylong registration effort at eight different locations around the USC campus as part of a national registration push ahead of November’s presidential election.

The deadline to register in South Carolina is Oct. 8, 30 days before Election Day.