“Have you heard about the early voting?”

Erin Marth can’t remember how many times she’s said that today. It’s a cold day to be out asking students to vote. It’s a cold day to be an activist.

Working 10 hours a day on top of school, Marth can understand where people get the idea that she and other New Voters Project workers are obsessed with getting people registered and voting. To an extent, she is all about her job.

“I’m addicted to my job, and I love it,” she says. “It just gives me the chills sometimes.”

Marth is part of the New Voters Project, the student group that has taken over campus with their vote wristbands, T-shirts and clipboards. It’s hard to avoid them anymore.

Not everyone understands Marth and her cause, she says. There are lots of annoyed, sideways looks from some of those Marth speaks to.

“Sometimes they can’t understand we’re doing this as non-partisan,” she says.

But for the most part, people are glad she’s out here, she says.

As she speaks, she takes moments to ask each person walking by if they know about the satellite voting.

Even when she sees someone from home, she pushes early voting and her cause.

“I’m constantly working,” she says.

There are few moments when Marth is not championing the New Voters Project cause, which is to make people in the college-age group heard.

“What we’re just doing is making democracy fair and balanced,” she says. “We’re revolutionizing the system.”

As she asks more and more people if they’ve heard about early voting, “I’ve already voted,” becomes a more common answer.

Marth nods and smiles, feeling as though she is part of something that has made a difference.

“Great,” she says.

The cause has become very much a part of her life. Class is secondary to the project, and Marth often forgets she even has to go. She has to remind herself constantly and write classes in her planner, because, otherwise, she’ll forget.

“I’ll just get so into this that I forget other things I have to do,” she says.

It doesn’t stop on the weekends either. She smiles and chuckles when asked if she takes a break Saturday and Sunday.

No, she says, she’s out knocking on doors or working the phone bank.

Her social life has become synonymous with her job.

“You get to know the people in the office,” she says.

Her roommate rarely sees her because Marth is out the door by 9 a.m. and not back until 10 or 11 p.m.

Marth said it’s hard to keep the few conversations they have away from the topic of the New Voters Project.

Marth says she started because of her political science major and because she wanted to get involved. Now, she can’t stop.

After the votes have been counted and the blinking states turn red and blue, Marth is going to sleep. And then she’s going to start studying for the test she has the day after Election Day.

The involvement can’t stop there. Marth has been turned on to activism after working for months with the New Voters Project.

“I think I’m going to have to get involved,” she says.