. The bill, authored by Assembly member Cottie Petrie-Norris , calls for historic investment to increase civic engagement among the state’s 3.1 million students enrolled at 147 public universities and colleges.
AB 963 gives these campuses the resources to designate a Civic and Voter Empowerment Coordinator, who will create a civic engagement education campaign and develop a Civic and Voter Empowerment Action Plan specific to their campus; work with the Secretary of State to send campus-wide emails, which share specified voting- and election-related dates and information, as well as to include those dates in printed and online academic calendars; disseminate civic-related dates and information through...
For California students, “a comprehensive education should not end in the classroom, but extend into the real world,” Petrie-Norris said. “We want to provide our students with the necessary tools to be engaged citizens, to shape their own political reality and create the future of the great state of California.
. California Secretary of State Alex Padilla and organizations like Feminist Majority Foundation, Young Invicibles, A Band of Voters, CA Hawaii State Conference of the NAACP, March For Our Lives California, Mi Familia Vota and the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition provided support.
“As pillars of our democracy are threatened, through suppressive voter registration and ID laws, manipulative re-districting efforts, interference by foreign governments and more, California has fought these threats and strengthened our democracy by enacting AB 963,” Feminist Majority Foundation National Campus Organizer Carmen Liñero-Lopez said.