“New Mexico is a battle ground state,” Wirth said. “My vote can have an impact there. If you’re from a state that is heavily Democratic or Republican with uncontested races then you should consider registering in Massachusetts.”

Even students who chose to register locally did not necessarily exercise their right to vote.

Last year, out of the three Cambridge wards in which Harvard students are the majority of voters, only three students voted, and they all lived in the Yard, Solnet says.

Wirth recommends that students pay attention to how politics relates to issues they care about and added that registering anywhere is vitally important as many elections are determined by a couple hundred votes.

“That’s the amount of people sitting here in Annenberg,” Wirth said at an interview during lunch one Thursday afternoon. “For us not to care right now is irresponsible as this is the country we are going to inherit.”

AS EASY AS NETFLIX

Recognizing low student voting rates, the IOP began to provide voter registration forms on Study Card Day in 1999. This year, the IOP partnered with a new voter registration service called TurboVote, which allows individuals to register quickly and efficiently online.

Once users have signed up, TurboVote tracks their election calendars and can send them completed voter-registration forms or vote-by-mail applications as well as pre-stamped, pre-addressed envelopes to their local election boards. TurboVote also sends email and text reminders to users to mail in forms, absentee ballots, or to vote in person.

TurboVote founder Seth E. Flaxman conceived of the idea for TurboVote while attending the Harvard Kennedy School. According to Flaxman, approximately 50 percent of Americans vote in presidential elections, around 40 percent in midterm elections, and as low as 10 or 20 percent in local elections or primaries.

After working in New York, Flaxman moved to Cambridge in 2009 and realized that he had missed a number of elections and had not re-registered to vote.

“I wondered, how come it’s so much easier for me to rent a movie than participate in democracy?” Flaxman says. “Voting doesn’t fit the way we live and it especially doesn’t fit the way students live. Students are moving around constantly. So to build a voter registration and voting system that fits the way students live it has to act more like Netflix.”

Lundberg was already registered when he submitted his study card, but said that the process seemed easy to use and was a great idea. Noah F. Greenwald ’15 forgot to turn in his study card that afternoon but registered through TurboVote.org on his own.

“Every year, freshmen are the group that should be registering to vote,” Flaxman says. “I would love to see every Harvard undergrad using TurboVote to stay registered and receive help voting by mail or voting in person after four years on Harvard’s campus. It might take four years to get there because the freshman class is usually the most intense about taking care of this.”

To improve TurboVote’s user accessibility, Flaxman is working with Solnet and Greenwald to recruit a Harvard student to code a mobile-friendly version of TurboVote. Greenwald said the programming might count towards a CS50 student’s final project. Solnet hopes the program will be completed this month so that it can be tested and implemented throughout the year.

Though TurboVote is still in its early stages, it has made an impact on Harvard students.

“I know a lot of people registered through [TurboVote] who wouldn’t have otherwise,” Greenwald says. “I don’t think I would’ve, especially freshman year. As a Harvard student who wasn’t working on the voter registration group, I don’t think I would have been motivated enough to do it.”

Greenwald will join many other freshmen who will vote for the first time next week. Starting in January, registered freshmen can vote in state caucuses and primaries. The class of 2015 will then have the opportunity to vote in the 2012 presidential election.

“We’re at a really big decision point,” Wirth said. “Right now is not time for apathy. It’s a time for action.”