Letter to the Editor: Mail-in ballots only
I predict there will be a lot of dismayed voters and students here in Cache County on November 8th. Not necessarily because their favorite candidate lost – but rather because they couldn’t vote at all.
Twenty out of twenty-nine counties in Utah are doing only vote-by-mail elections this year. This means there will be no polling places on election day in these counties. Cache County is one of them.
This is particularly disturbing because it means that you must have a correct mailing address on file to receive your ballot. 84% of USU students live away from home (according to www.usu.edu), probably at a mailing address that they might not have updated because it is temporary housing. They will not receive their ballots unless they update their address at the driver’s license division (or online) and re-register to vote with their new address by the deadline, November 1st. Let’s be honest – many students (myself included) tend to procrastinate. But after November 1st, it will be too late. And since ballots are being mailed out earlier (on October 18th), waiting until the last moment to register is probably a bad idea.
The mail system favors the established residents – those who live at a permanent address – and makes it less likely that students will vote. The County Clerk’s office told me that they get a higher voter turnout using mail. That may be true, but I would be lying if it hadn’t crossed my mind that perhaps suppressing the millennial vote (which tends to be less Republican) was partly the intention.
If I am wrong, Cache County, then please say so. Tell me how you are ensuring that this election system won’t unintentionally (or intentionally) suppress student voices. But if I’m right – which I hope not – then students need to act now to make sure they aren’t denied the right to vote.
— Joshua Hortin is an environmental engineering grad student from West Haven, Utah. He loves writing and ruminating on anxiety.
Mail-in ballots should be sent to what students call their permanent address. If that isn’t Cache Valley, then have a parent, sibling, whomever, mail it. If Cache Valley is where they actually call home, then saying that millenials’ votes are being suppressed because they were procrastinating their voter registration is just reinforcing the stereotype that millenials want everything handed to them with little to no effort on their part. If millenials want a voice they should stop waiting for someone else to give it to them because it won’t be their voice if they do. Their is no conspiracy to keep students from voting. Evidenced by the fact that all but nine counties are doing this. The information is out there, vote.gov. For supposedly being tech savvy, millenials sure play the “I didn’t know” card a lot. I am a millennial and a student and have been a registered voter for the entirety of my residency in Cache Valley. Mail-in ballots are great. They are actually convenient, which is far more than can be said for brick and mortar polling locations.