Between May 24 and July 4, the Metro St. Louis League registered three voters at Juneteenth events, three people at Red Circle Food Pantry, 61 new voters at PrideFest, and 237 new citizens at naturalization ceremonies.
Almost every Friday the federal court swears in new citizens who have completed the process to obtain United States citizenship. At these ceremonies, the League is almost always there to register the new citizens to vote. While these are most often held at the Eagleton Court House downtown, in June the Naturalization team also ventured out to support voter registration of new citizens at the Gateway Arch, Missouri History Museum, and Lindenwood University.
A large backlog of new citizens is waiting to be naturalized, and the court has decided to have one or two additional ceremonies each week for the next three months. There will be ceremonies on Tuesdays at 10:00 am and back-to-back ceremonies on Fridays at 10:00 and 11:30 am. Most of the ceremonies will be held downtown at the Eagleton Federal Courthouse and the Robert A. Young Federal Building.
Ceremonies are also scheduled at Harris-Stowe State University, the Old Courthouse, and St. Louis City Hall. We will need a lot of volunteers to staff all the ceremonies and support the new citizens on their journeys to becoming voters. If you are already a voter registration volunteer and haven't volunteered in a while, this summer is a great opportunity to re-engage. Watch your email for opportunities. If you are not a voter registration volunteer and would like to get involved, contact Jennifer Shylanski at voterregistration [at] lwvstl.org.
On June 24th, the voter registration team spent an amazing morning at Lindenwood University where the United States District Court conducted its new citizen naturalization ceremony. The university pulled out all the stops, including decorations. In addition to the new citizens, their families and friends, the Missouri Boys State and Missouri Girls State held their government camps for high school juniors and seniors at Lindenwood that week, and part of their program was attending the naturalization ceremony. More than 100 young people watched the ceremony. Following the ceremony, several stayed to observe the voter registration team registering the new citizens to vote, and the team fielded some questions from Boys State and Girls State participants. The team registered 41 new citizens to vote.
League members Ann Roth and Cheri Crockett observed the ceremony and were struck with how welcoming all the speakers were toward the new citizens, including the speakers for the Missouri Boys State and Missouri Girls State sponsoring organization, The American Legion. They had a great experience when one of the Boys State counselors came up to them, and welcomed them. He said that he was from Springfield and very proudly stated that the League had registered him to vote.
The end of June was also busy with other events for the voter registration team. We supported several community events associated with Juneteenth and Pride.
At Pride Fest, Sabrina Tyuse reported that one of the registrants was a former felon who did not know that since he was "off papers" that he could now register to vote. He had been off papers for about 10 years. The teams helped six people check their voter registration status using VOTE411.org and answered questions about residency requirements and Real ID.
