Elections—at the federal, state, and local levels—are the major topic of discussion this summer and fall. The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) is helping the voter registration effort by offering space in its stations for nonpartisan volunteers to add new voters to the rolls.

MARTA’s effort began in late June, when 1,186 Georgians signed up to vote in the state’s July 31 primary. This election is an important one for Atlanta area public transit supporters, including a referendum across the 10-county MARTA service area proposing a 1 percent regional sales tax. This tax would provide $8.5 billion for transportation improvements, more than half of which would go to public transit.

“Several organizations had reached out to MARTA about coming into our stations for voter registration,” explained Toni Thornton, community outreach planner. “Because we received so many requests, we at MARTA decided to see if this was something we could offer to interested organizations and individuals.” System employees earlier conducted small voter drives on a volunteer basis, she said, but this is the first time MARTA has invited other organizations to bring their registration efforts into the stations.

Before moving ahead, MARTA established guidelines for the participating organizations. For example, the voter registration tables could not impede the flow of traffic to and from the platform; they were set up in the general open area of each station. Another requirement was that the organizations could not include any political affiliation in their names.

MARTA knew that it had to include its hub station, Five Points, in any voter registration drive; it identified the other stations with high ridership numbers—H.E. Holmes, Kensington, College Park, and Lindbergh—for the primary election registration effort June 18 and 21. “We’re looking at future dates before the general election,” Thornton said, “probably in late September, and we’ve already had requests to add more dates and stations.”

How did MARTA make contact with the sponsoring organizations? “Public transit agencies can ask community organizations to partner with them on this sort of project,” she continued. “Initially, we sent them information through our database. We invited them to participate, letting them know they would be responsible for training voter registration volunteers. We invited each group to provide up to six volunteers so we wouldn’t cause traffic problems.”

MARTA passengers stopped by the tables and filled out the voter registration forms during their walk to or from the trains. The sponsoring organizations were responsible for submitting the information to the appropriate government body.

In summary, Thornton said: “We’ve gotten so much positive feedback about the voter registration effort from our customers, as well as from the organizations that participated. I’m pretty excited about it.”

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MARTA hosted voter registration drives at several of its stations in preparation for the July 31 primary election, and plans to schedule more events before the November general election.