Registration ignorance leads to student voting apathy
A third of Utah State University students don’t know if their vote counts.
“From what we could tell, USU students generally don’t have a huge interest in politics,” said LaShel Wells, a USU student.
Do students care? A survey executed by a small group of students in a management and human resource (MHR 3110) class supplies some general answers.
Ninety-three percent of students who are not registered to vote said they didn’t know how to register and 48.25 percent of registered students said they didn’t know where and when to vote. A need for more information is apparent from the survey results.
The group’s project was to find a community need and work to meet the need. Before the survey, which was done to “find out if there really was a need,” Wells said, they were unaware of the USU student body needing information to become active in local and national elections.
“Working with the county representative for students has been a big challenge,” Wells said. “She really doesn’t seem to care about us.”
Why? Wells said that attracting college students is not a top priority for most candidates because “not enough students care to make a difference.”
Melanie Hardcastle, a senior graduating in May, said that voting in national elections is not always a top issue for her. Local leaders are who matter.
“They affect my everyday life,” she said.
She said she didn’t vote in the last election because she was completely uneducated about the candidates and issues. If coverage of candidates and their platforms reach students better, then voting would make more sense. Hardcastle would rather not vote than make an uneducated decision for the community.
Sterling Widmer, a fellow group member of Wells, agrees.
“Students in particular don’t vote because they are unfamiliar with the system and feel they don’t have time to find out for themselves.”
Most people, he added, don’t know enough about the issues and are afraid of voting because the elected official might not represent their views.
Cache County politics have a lot do with students’ lives, especially the majority who live off-campus. The MHR group understands this and is planning on a table on campus that will allow students to register to vote and offer some more information for the upcoming election.
Only 56 percent of surveyed students said they know who the candidates are for the November election. Information is an important factor in the voting process along with knowing where to vote, which only 52 percent of surveyed students know where that is.
“As a group we believe that if we could show that we care about what happens the government will work more positively with the school and that they will take a more active part in this public school,” Wells said.
For further information on registering and voting procedures students can contact the Cache County clerk at 716-7150.
-ireneh@cc.usu.edu