Volunteers to look for votes at concert

When the Dave Matthews Band plays at Joseph P. Riley Jr. Park today, 21-year old Ethan Robbins will be in the parking lot with his clipboard.

Robbins serves as one of several volunteers traveling with touring musical groups such as the Dave Matthews Band and Pearl Jam.

He volunteers for HeadCount, an organization that encourages people to fill out voter registration cards for the upcoming election. Robbins expects to help register 200 to 300 Charlestonians today.

"I just think so many people in the country right now are very apathetic and are complaining about how the country is run," he said. "But so many of those people don't vote, so they don't have a voice in the world we live in."

His involvement in the program started during his sophomore year of college, when he met the co-founder and Executive Director of HeadCount, Andy Bernstein.

More than 85,000 people have registered to vote since Bernstein helped create the organization, and they average around 1,000 new registered voters each week.

"We actually first heard from the Dave Matthews Band in the spring of '04, they reached out to us," he said. "I really credit them for helping us develop the model because we really needed to have dedicated people. In 2004 we registered over 12,000, so this year were just trying to replicate the same things and hopefully register more than 12,000."

The HeadCount volunteers will begin working the parking lot at the ballpark about two hours before the show.

Reach Chase Purdy at cpurdy@postandcourier.com.