With the 2012 presidential election less than two months away, many students have already decided who to vote for — no one.
Challenges with absentee voting, school priorities and political apathy stand out as common reasons some students say they won’t vote in November’s presidential election.
Registered voter and political science sophomore Hayden Price wrote lengthy papers on each candidate, but if anything, he said that only made him less likely to vote.
When asked if he was voting: “Probably not, honestly,” Price confessed. “They both suck, pretty much, in my opinion.”
The “they” he referred to includes President Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee — the two front-runners in this year’s race. Other young registered voters expressed similar sentiments.
“I don’t like either major candidate, so my vote’s not really going to matter,” said Angela Balis, electrical engineering junior.
Balis acknowledged that school-related responsibilities get in the way of voting, and she’s not alone.
“I just feel like I have so many other things to do,” said biology sophomore Kaitlin Junius.
Going against the grain, finance sophomore Paul Guinn said he would definitely vote in November, with hopes that the next president would help lower the unemployment rate, which sits at 8.3 percent, according the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“I feel like a lot of college kids don’t really understand the important issues,” Guinn said.
Geauxvotelsu.com, a resource to make student voting easier, offers instructions for registering to vote, as well as absentee voting. The website offers guidelines for in-state and out-of-state students, because even Louisiana residents must cast their vote in the parish where they’re registered.
Connie Flanagan, an advisory board member of the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), said she also feels that if Americans want their voices to be heard, voting should be made easier.
“Making it transparent, making it a norm and making it easy — for any group — is the right way to go,” said Flanagan, a human ecology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Any way to make it less complicated is going to make it more likely for people to do it.”
Some organizations have made it a mission to make voting easy for young people, such as Rock the Vote and HeadCount, a nonpartisan group that sets up voter registration booths at concerts to increase youth civic engagement.
“[Young voters] see the political arena as something that is intimidating or something that’s not accessible to them,” said Jane Henderson, artist relations manager at HeadCount. “What HeadCount tries to do is to make it accessible and easy to understand.”
There are 46 million young people, ages 18 to 29, eligible to vote, according to reports by CIRCLE, which is about one-seventh of America’s population according to 2010 U.S. Census data.
