Improving accessibility can increase voter turnout
If ASUO stopped wasting time promising to be more accessible and actually did something about it, voter turnout would increase.
Start by making elections more accessible.
ASUO can simply post a list of the positions and candidates in one of their big, scary office windows. Along those same lines, the ASUO Elections Board should actually update their Web site (http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~asuoelec). They should include Web page addresses for candidates who have them, preferred contact information for each candidate (like an e-mail address), the schedule of debates and candidate fairs, and when the Emerald’s elections special is being published. They could also include information about dates of the primary and general elections and directions for voting on DuckWeb.
Voter turnout is also about voter education. Voter education doesn’t happen by candidates using up paper resources covering every inch of the campus with signs and leaflets. It doesn’t happen by friends wearing shirts or signs telling people who to vote for, or by planting OSPIRG people every 30 feet, telling us whether to vote for their measure. It happens by getting the issues out there and then giving the candidates an opportunity to take a stand on them.
Students on this campus don’t vote because they don’t know or they don’t care. The only ways you can get them to vote are by getting out the information and by making them care. It may be difficult, but it can be done.

Mindi Rice

sophomore

journalism