June 12, 2019 Annual Meeting & Dinner

 Cobblestone Creek Country Club

Town Council members Mike Powers, left, and Cathleen Lewis, with John Ryan, Mercer County Surrogate Judge Diane Gerofsky and Mercer County Freeholder Ann Cannon

The Lawrence League of Women Voters is thrilled to announce that our LWVLT Youth Leadership Awards were given to two Lawrence High School seniors who have excelled in raising their fellow students' awareness of the importance of voting, as well as educating and registering new teenaged voters.

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Our 2019 Youth Leadership Awards go to Cassidy Stoneback (right) and Maura Freeland (left) of Lawrence HS.

Over the course of their Junior and Senior years, Maura and Cassidy registered 185 new student voters at three voter registration drives at Lawrence HS in June and September 2018, and April 2019.

In December 2018, Maura and Cassidy were awarded a $500 grant from the national LWV Educational Fund for its Youth Voter Registration project. This project is designed to "engage high school, community college, and/or vocational school students in the electoral process, and to mitigate the widespread disparities in youth voting among African Americans, Latinos, and young people with no college experience." The registration locations were: Lawrence HSl, the East Trenton Collaborative Spring Street Fair, MCCC James Kerney Campus, Trenton Central HS, and the STEM Civics Charter HS in Ewing and yielded 157 new student voter registrations in Mercer County.

We are delighted to learn that Maura will attend Rowan University as part of the Honors College with a major in political science. Cassidy will enter the honors program at American University in Washington, DC next fall, majoring in CLEG (Communication, Legal Institutions, Economics, and Government). We send them both our best wishes for the future!

LHS 2019 Awards

Youth Voter Registration Project

Cassidy Stoneback and Maura Freeland registering new voters

at STEM Civics High School in Ewing, May 29, 2019.

1.     We are proud to announce that in December 2018, Lawrence High School students Maura Freeland and Cassidy Stoneback were awarded a $500 grant from the LWV Educational Fund for the Youth Voter Registration project. The project aims to engage high school, community college, and/or vocational school students in the electoral process, and in particular work to mitigate the widespread disparities in youth voting among African Americans, Latinos, and young people with no college experience. Registration events have taken place this spring at: Lawrence High School, The East Trenton Collaborative spring street fair, MCCC James Kerney Campus, Trenton High School -- the Trenton's STEM Civics charter school on May 29. The project has 133 new registrations thus far.

2.     Our League's primary area of activity and success continues to be Voter Registration. From May 2018 to the present we have registered 345 voters and helped many more. In 2018-19, we held 19 additional voter registration events targeting new voters and under-served populations. These locations included Lawrence High School (three times), Lawrence Community Day, Mercer County College James Kerney Campus in Trenton, Hamilton Oktoberfest, the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen, and New Day Ministries at Shiloh Baptist Church -- to name just a few.