Several students were unable to vote in Tuesday's election after registering to vote with the Vanderbilt chapter of the Student Association for Voter Empowerment.

SAVE's mission is to increase voter turnout among young people by removing access barriers and promoting stronger civic education. According to junior Cameron Pastrick, president of the Vanderbilt chapter of SAVE, making sure students are aware of how to register to vote is important in increasing youth turnout.

"Twenty-five percent of youth unintentionally miss the registration deadline," said Pastrick.

Senior Conner George filled out and turned in a voter registration form distributed by members of SAVE when they visited Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity, of which he is a member.

"I took a form and filled it out," said George, who was joined by several other members of the chapter.

After returning the form to the SAVE representatives, he did not give the matter another thought. "I just assumed they'd take care of it," George said.

In mid-October, however, one of the other members of his fraternity who registered with SAVE told George that he was still classified as unregistered when he visited the Web site for the Tennessee Department of State Voter Registration Information Lookup.

"So I checked (the Web site), and sure enough, I wasn't registered. A couple of my brothers checked and they weren't either," George said.

George said he thinks at least 10 others in his chapter who registered with SAVE were unable to vote on Tuesday. He said he thinks SAVE somehow made a mistake with their registration forms.

"It seems pretty cut and dry that they just dropped the ball and didn't deliver the forms," George said.

Pastrick said some students had turned in incomplete or illegible forms. If the student sealed the form after filling it out, the volunteers were unable to check to see whether the form was correct. Once collected, volunteers brought the registration forms to the board of elections to be reviewed, she said.

"Every single person who filled out their form incorrectly was contacted (unless their phone number was not on the form) by the board of elections. ... All the student needed to do was call back with the correct information and they would (within 24 hours) receive a voter registration card," Pastrick said.

"Ultimately, individuals are responsible for the accuracy of information on their registration forms, and once forms are turned in to election officials we no longer have access to them," said Director of Policy and Programs for national SAVE Bobby Campbell.

George, however, said he doesn't think this was the case with his registration.
"I filled out everything completely," he said. "I'm positive no one ever called me. And I haven't heard of anyone who filled out one of SAVE's forms from my house who was actually registered. I don't know how 10 to 12 guys would have filled out something wrong."

"I'm commissioning in the Navy in about six months, and I get no say now in who my boss is next year," said senior Jason Evert, who also was not registered despite applying. "Regardless of whether or not my vote would have made a difference, a lot of people have fought and died for the right to vote."

"To have a student organization meant to recruit voters disenfranchise students is really ironic and disheartening," George said.

"It is very unfortunate that some of these forms were initially incorrectly filled out, however (students) had ample time to correct their errors, they just needed to make a small effort," Pastrick said. "We are very systematic in our procedures, and registering was successful for most everyone else."

Nationally, SAVE registered almost 10,000 students to vote in this election. At Vanderbilt, SAVE and the Election Alliance jointly registered 1,361 undergraduate students this year.

-Lauren Koenig contributed reporting to this article.