Hannah Golden | Freelance reporter
Clusters of freshman crowd the carpeted dorm hallways. Ballot measure booklets and boxes of Cheez-Its are strewn across the way. This has become an increasingly common sight as first-time voters on campus are making an effort to fulfill their patriotic duties.
First-time voter and University of Oregon student Michaela Fraenkel@@checked@@ noticed some students are asking their friends and calling their parents with the same question: “Who should I vote for?”
“I feel like if you don’t understand, then you shouldn’t vote,” Fraenkel said.@@see note 1 below@@ “Better to not vote than to vote by what your parents tell you. That’s like giving a vote to your parents.”
According to UO statistics, 57 percent of all students are Oregon residents; another 35 percent are out-of-state residents.@@http://admissions.uoregon.edu/freshmen/profile.html@@ Whether or not Oregon residents should be concerned or appreciative that many of their out-of-state counterparts are voting for the Oregon ballot is debatable.
However, out-of-state residents, while they affect the presidential vote, could potentially skew the county- and state-level elections. The last week has yielded much discussion around campus on the upcoming measures — many of which affect tuition and student-related issues.
Fraenkel decided to vote as an Oregon resident, changing her prior status as California voter, when she heard the buzz around campus about how directly certain ballot measures will affect her and other students.
She said she was most attentive to the corporate kicker tax measure, which would affect education directly.
In terms of the presidential election, voting as an Oregon resident has much more influence per vote than it does in states like California. For a national issue like the presidency, having a vote weigh more can be extremely beneficial in a state like Oregon, for which the population is considered “lighter blue” than California.@@see note 2 below@@
When asked how she was approaching the ballot, she said, “The information is out there. It’s easy (for students) to inform themselves, but they need to put in the effort.”
She researched the ballots by finding non-partisan information where possible.
Still, she conceded that she’s nervous about voting for the first time, worrying that she and other students may not have been as informed as they could’ve been.
“Take voting seriously,” she said. “Both the presidency and local ballot measures affect us as students.”