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GREENSBORO — Sarah Goff and Rachel Ryding are 17, and it’s killing them.

The two Grimsley High seniors have spent seven months and untold hours working to promote voting in an election in which they can’t participate.

“I think that’s why I’m working so hard to register voters, because I can’t vote,” Goff said.

But some of her fellow Grimsley students can. So when school started this fall, the girls had a mission: Get every eligible student at the school registered to vote. It was a task that involved getting the data, tracking the students down and sometimes convincing them that democracy works.

“You take it for granted that everyone does vote and it’s surprising so many people are apathetic,” Ryding said.

The reluctant high schoolers didn’t know what they were up against, however. These girls weren’t amateurs to the voter registration game. By the time they started getting the vote out at Grimsley, the girls had logged many hours registering voters downtown, at Friendly Shopping Center, UNCG and elsewhere in Greensboro.

They got their start earlier this year when Goff wandered into the Obama headquarters downtown and ended up volunteering to register voters before she walked out. She told Ryding about it a few days later and the two were back downtown the next day registering people.

The girls got cold shoulders, the occasional “get lost” and even an anti-establishment tirade or two. But they got new voters, some young, some not, signed up to take part in an election for the first time in their lives. There is one woman Ryding said she will never forget.

She met her in Center City Park. The woman was sitting with her two children and was curious about registering. Ryding sat with her and went line for line over the document.

“It was just really rewarding to me,” she said. “I can’t control the vote but I can register people.”

The experience has affected both teens. Both wrote about their work for college essays. Goff wants to get into UNCG and maybe become a journalist. Ryding is looking at UNC-Chapel Hill and wants to learn Arabic and work in politics.

The girls aren’t sure how many people they registered outside of school. They guess the number is in the hundreds. At school they found 60 students old enough to register, several of whom were already registered. Others weren’t U.S. citizens, but the girls were able to register about 30 eligible students, and there were a few teachers, too.

Not getting to vote is hard on the girls. Goff admits she filled out a registration form “just to see what it felt like.” She didn’t submit the form, but both girls said they will be glued to the television Tuesday night as the results come in.

The girls learned plenty from this election already, not least among them the power of the process. In a time when there is no short supply of partisan bickering and division Ryding and Goff — die-hard Obama supporters — said they believe in the system, even if it means their candidate loses.

“It will be disappointing,” Goff said “But if McCain wins, that’s democracy.”

Contact J. Brian Ewing at 373-7351 or brian.ewing@news-record.com