Low turnout of the youth vote — especially in tight races — has long been a sore point for young activists. According to the Washington, D.C.-based Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, voter participation among 18 to 24-year-olds has declined in recent decades. In 2000, only 28.7 percent of people in that age group voted in local, state and federal elections.
But if these numbers point to a disenchanted apathy, student participation in ASUO elections is abysmally depressing. This year, only 14.1 percent of the student body voted in the primary election, and a pitiful 9.9 percent did in the general election.
While this year’s participation was significantly better than 1993’s all-time low of 5.8 percent, it’s still a far cry short of 28.7 percent, and a democratic tragedy compared to 1955’s campus voter turnout of some 43 percent.
This apathy, needless to say, is bad for the interests of college students on both the University and national levels.
“It’s supposed to be a representative government, and it’s hard to say that you’re representing everyone when only a small number of people turn out to vote,” ASUO President-elect Adam Petkun said.
But on the national scale, where much more than just student interests are in play, from the seeds of apathy grows political disadvantage. Although most of the American public education system needs fiscal and structural reform, it’s not a jump to think that higher education has suffered worse than primary and secondary education because parents of elementary and high school students tend to vote, whereas college students often don’t.
Who or what is to blame for this flagging participation, at least at the University level? Well, there are at least a couple ideas.
“It’s hard to engage young folks in political processes,” ASUO President Maddy Melton said. “I think that if we could learn how to engage students in the political process at large, you would see the trend of voting go way up.”
At least part of the problem lies with the ASUO Election Board’s planning. Ignoring a Constitution Court demand that the board carefully schedule this year’s elections to avoid a conflict with the law school’s Dead Week, and under the duress of technical and bureaucratic problems, the Election Board scheduled primary and general elections in a way that gave candidates scant time to prepare and campaign. Worse, these problems were compounded by an ill-prepared elections packet that was rejected not once, but twice by the Court. That the lack of time for candidates to share their ideas with students left the campus less informed, while simultaneously not helping turnout, is also unacceptable.
To the board’s credit, they at least provided pizza at this year’s general election presidential debate, which surely would have helped garner interest if any fraction of the student body actually cared.
In any case, get out and vote this November in your local, state and national elections. And if you’re among the 90.1 percent of students who didn’t vote in this year’s ASUO election and aren’t graduating, speak your voice and do so next year.