Over the past five years, ASUO spring elections have received votes from an average of 7.3% of the UO student body, with the most recent winter special election receiving slightly less at only 6%.
In order to raise this turnout and garner more student engagement for the approaching election on April 3, ASUO is currently advertising the election on its social media accounts and will soon be hosting events to help students better understand the candidates running for office. 
“We have already come up with a plan to advertise [the elections] on official ASUO channels, and we have done filing workshops in the past, just before the openings started,” Election Board Chair Grigorii Malakhov said. “We are trying to promote it as much as we can.”
However, the elections board currently faces limitations on the extent to which they can advertise the election — one being a lack of access to other ASUO-related social media platforms, and another being that the board’s staff is composed of only five people. 
With a small staff, advertising has been left on the backburner due to recent issues with candidate registration, other grievances and the need to keep up with the election timeline. 
As a result, several students have expressed that they have not heard much information about the upcoming election and are not planning to vote. 
“I’m not really aware of how much [the spring election] affects me, or how important it is that I vote,” student John Soltero said. 
Other students said they saw a banner in front of the EMU for the winter special election in February, but haven’t noticed any other materials used to promote an ASUO election since. 
In addition to the banner, something that effectively encouraged many students to vote in the special election was the campaign led by OSPIRG on 13th Ave. where they encouraged students to vote “no” on one of the ballot measures. 
“I think the reason why they got a lot of votes was because they are very good with canvassing, that’s just part of how they do things,” Malakhov said. “They canvas for a lot of other public interest issues, so they’re able to use their tools in making people vote.”
Despite somewhat successful campaign strategies, several students noted from personal experience that the likely reason for why overall turnout is so low among college students is because they are either wrapped up in their own lives, or do not understand how voting in these elections will impact them. 
“If something is not directly affecting [students] in front of their face, they’re probably not going to really think much about it,” student Audrey Steffen said. “I mean, personally, I think that’s probably true for myself, which is selfish, but kind of the way things are realistically.”
Another student, Tyler Riedell, feels like the decisions made in the elections over the two-and-a-half years he’s attended UO haven’t been noticeable to him at all, and that he hasn’t felt the need to vote as a result. 
“It’s been hard for me to really think about or cast a vote if I don’t know or see anything,” he said. 
To get more students engaged, the ASUO elections board is now opening up the debate and town hall to a larger group of people than in previous years. In doing so, they hope to help students better understand and get to know the candidates running. 
“I feel like there is just no interest because I feel like a lot of times people think that student governments are very separate, [that they don’t] seem approachable, but what we’re trying to do is just make sure that people start feeling more comfortable,” Malakhov said. 
During the town hall, candidates will share their political stances and answer student-posed questions, and during the debate, candidates will answer prepared questions covering campus topics. 
These events will take place on April 1 and April 2 at 6:00 p.m. in the EMU Redwood Auditorium, and voting for the election will be open from April 3 through April 8.